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®fje Btsfjop ^atiliocfe 3Ecctures, XS8X 



STUDIES 



English Reformation 



J. WILLIAMS, D.D. 

BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT 





NEW YORK 
E. p. BUTTON & COMPANY 

713 Broadway 

1881 



// 



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Copyright, 1881, 
By E. p. button & CO. 



JVrss 0/ Sf. John land 

7. y. Lit tit' «5r» Co., Stereotypy' Foundry, 

MO Astor PLue, N. K SuJ^olk Co,, N. V, 



THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. 



In the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis 
of Brooklyn, N. Y., moved by his sense of the great 
good which might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ 
and to the Church, of which he was an ever grateful 
member, gave to the General Theological Seminary of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church certain securities ex- 
ceeding in value eleven thousand dollars for the founda- 
tion and maintenance of a Lectureship in said Seminary. 

Out of love to a former Pastor and enduring friend, 
the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of 
Massachusetts, he named his Foundation " The Bishop 
Paddock Lectureship." 

The deed of trust declares that: 

** The subjects of the Lectures shall be such as appertain to the 
defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Holy 
Bible and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer aganist the 
varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or 
professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in 
respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atone??ient, 
ytistifi cation and the Inspiration of the Word of God and of 
such central facts as the Church'' s Divine Order and Sacra??tents^ 
her historical Reforination and her rights and powers as a pure 
and National Church. And other subjects may be chosen if 
unanimously approved by the Board of Appointment as being 
both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship." 



iv Tlie Bishop Paddock Lectures. 

Under the appointment of the Board created by the 
Trust, viz., the Dean of the General Theological Semi- 
nary and the Bishops respectively of Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and Long Island, the Rt. Rev. John Wil- 
liams, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Connecticut, delivered 
the Lectures for the year 1881 contained in this volume. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



There are some things which I very much desire 
to say in the way of preface to the following lectures. 

I owe it to myself to state that the request from 
the Founder of the Lectureship that I would be the 
first lecturer, and adding the subject which he wished 
me to take up, came to me before I was, by the 
terms of the deed of endowment, appointed one of 
those trustees empowered to select a lecturer. I was 
not concerned in the act of election. 

Secondly, I must beg to remind any readers I may 
have, that to one writing in this country on the Eng- 
lish Reformation original documents are inaccessible. 
All one can do is to use all care and diligence to 
obtain information from sources worthy of trust; to 
'^verify references" as far as possible; and to take 
nothing on any one's unverified assertion. This course 
is, no doubt, a humbling one, in that it shuts him 
who adopts it up to a narrow path and leaves little 



VI Prefatory Note, 

f . — 

room for imagination, and still less for originality. 
But it is the only honest course notwithstanding its 
lowliness. I have referred, as far as possible, to books 
accessible to students of theology. 

71iirdly, the lectures, printed here as five, were by 
stress of time and place delivered as four. A good 
deal therefore which now appears was omitted in the 
deliver}\ 

Lastly, lectures must, unavoidably, contain repeti- 
tions of facts if not of arguments which would, under 
other circumstances be inadmissible. I have tried, as 
far as possible, to avoid them. 

J. W. 

April, iSSi. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

The General Call for Reformation — Its Causes and possible 

Methods 9 

LECTURE II. 

Evils to be reformed— Agents— Principle acted on— Sources 

of Information; and alleged Variations 41 

LECTURE III. 
Abolition of Papal Jurisdiction in England 79 

LECTURE IV. 
Royal Supremacy 125 

LECTURE V. 
Doctrine 175 



LECTURE I. 

The General Call for Reformation- 
Its Causes and Possible Methods. 



STUDIES ON THE ENGLISH 
REFORMATION. 



LECTURE I. 

THE GENERAL CALL FOR REFORMATLON—LTS 
CAUSES AND POSSIBLE METHODS. 

T CANNOT begin the first course of lectures 
^ on the excellent foundation established by- 
one whose good deeds to the Church have been 
manifold, without at least a few words of thank- 
fulness and congratulation. Such foundations 
as this have been a real, and, among those 
who think of such matters at all, a deeply 
felt need in our Church, especially in her in- 
stitutions for theological training. The double 
purpose which they serve, first of inducing stu- 
dents to give themselves, diligently and care- 
fully, to special lines of investigation, and, 
next, of enabling them to give, to the best 
of their abilities, the results of such special 
studies to those who may be aided by them, 
can scarcely be overvalued. While, therefore, 



12 TJic E fig I is h Reformation. 

both personally and officially, I venture to ex- 
press my thankfulness to the founder of this 
Lecture, I cannot but congratulate the ven- 
erable Institution with which it is connected, 
on the possession of an instrumentality which 
may be made so available to the best interests 
of careful study in Divinity. 

The subject which was assigned to me, when 
I was honored with the appointment that brings 
me here, was the ENGLISH Reformation. I 
have not supposed that it thus became my duty 
to attempt to present to you a chronologically 
arranged sketch of the history of the period 
which those two words cover. It has seemed 
to me, that the end intended could be better 
reached by some examination of the underly- 
ing principles which, with whatever obscura- 
tions from time to time in individual minds, 
or even in the minds of bodies of men, i-eally 
shaped the work; by endeavoring to point out 
the lines and methods on and by which results 
were attained; by exhibiting the character of 
some of those results; by attempting to dis- 
criminate between things that really belong 



The English Reformation, 13 

to the work of reform and those that do not, 
and to relegate the latter to their proper place; 
in a word, by a selection of topics rather than 
a mere consecutive narration of events. And 
now, without further preface, let me address 
myself to my work. 

A question that meets us at the very outset 
of our inquiries is this: What proof is there of 
any wide-spread conviction, at the beginning 
of the sixteenth century and earlier, that a 
reformation was necessary } It is said, the mere 
sudden outbreak of an individual here or there, 
the mere sudden movement of even a number 
of persons cannot afford sufficient evidence of 
such a pervading conviction. Such outbreaks 
and such movements are not of infrequent oc- 
currence in the world's history. You can no 
more judge of the intellectual and moral at- 
mosphere of a period by them, than you can 
judge of the atmospheric conditions of avast 
country by the storms or tornadoes of isolated 
districts. A passing tumult on the surface of 
the ocean is not its groundswell. Without 
stopping to consider the limitations or modi- 



T4 The English Reformation, 

fications with which these statements are to be 
accepted, it may still be doubted whether the 
question which gives rise to them has always 
received the attention it deserves. I believe 
that its consideration is a condition precedent 
to the intelligent study of any and all methods 
of reformation adopted in the sixteenth century. 

It is fortunate that history gives a direct and 
unmistakable answer to this question. The 
very abundance of material is, indeed, a source 
of embarrassment. To collect it would be to 
compile volumes. To select from it is not 
an easy task. The testimony comes from **all 
sorts and conditions of men;" from the loftiest 
as well as the lowliest in ecclesiastical place 
and station. Time and space forbid me to 
do more than to call your attention to the 
long list of names — not of querulous and dis- 
contented doctrinai7^eSy but — of men of mark 
and acknowledged power, who, for centuries 
preceding the sixteenth, demand, in tones that 
cannot be mistaken, the reformation of the 
Church. 

As far back as the twelfth century, St Ber- 



The English Reformation, 15 

nard — called the last of the Fathers — said, 
** Who will grant me to see, before I die, 
the Church of God as it was in the ancient 
days ? " ^ And this cry had gathered strength 
and emphasis in the centuries that followed. 
It was heard in 1409, at Pisa, with its pledge, 
alas ! unfulfilled, of purification in *^ Head and 
members;" at Constance, in 1414, in sermons 
than which no utterances can be more distinct, 
in Gerson's catalogue of abuses, and in what 
we should call a Committee on Reformation, 
though it was then termed a ^' Reformation 
College;" at B^sle, in 143 1, when propositions 
for a reformation of the Church were submitted 
to the then Pontiff by Henry VI., King of 
England. 

If v/e turn from Councils to individual di- 
vines, we are confronted with a long list of 
illustrious names. I will only, however, recall 
to you those of Gerson, the preachers at Con- 
stance, Contarini, Sadolet and other members 
of what was known as the ^^ Oratory of Divine 
Love," on the continent of Europe; and of 

1 '•''Ep. ad Eugen.,^^ ccxxxviii. 6. 



i6 TJie EnglisJi Reformation. 

Grostete,^ Bradvvardine, Fitzalph and Colet 
in England. If I do not mention Jerome of 
Prague, John Huss, Wickliffe and others, it is 
only because I would name none to whose 
testimony those who deny any necessity of a 
reformation can, on any ground, object. If to 
those we add the numerous names of theolo- 
gians and other scholars that come to the 
notice of one studying the history of the three 
centuries preceding the Reformation, we have 
an array of testimony that is simply over- 
whelming.^ Bossuet attempts — and others have 
followed him — to break the force of this tes- 
timony by asserting that the conclusion drawn 
from it **is a manifest deceit." He says, ''not 
one of these doctors even for once thought of 
clianging the faith of the Church, or of cor- 
recting her worship, which chiefly consisted in 
tlic sacrifice of the altar, or of subverting the 
authority of her prelates, and chiefly that of 
the Pope."^ 

2 Sec his tremendous indictment of the Roman Court in Perry's 
*«Lifc of Grostete," c. x. 

3 Ilardwick on the Articles c. i. sec. i. ■* ** Variations," l)k. i. 2. 



The English Reformation, \j 

But this, however specious it may be, is the 
merest perversion of the truth. Practical evils 
in the Church have, as a rule, their roots in 
doctrine. How could the shameful sale of 
indulgences and masses have been reformed 
without touching doctrinal teaching concern- 
ing the intermediate state ? How could such 
a scandal as the offering in one year of nearly 
a thousand pounds at the altar of Thomas a 
Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, when during 
the same period not one penny was offered at 
the altar of our Lord — hov/ could such a scan- 
dal have been abated, and yet nothing have 
been said as to saintly intercession and invo- 
cation ? I adduce but two instances, where 
many more might have been presented; but 
these two are enough to prove that the words 
of Bossuet are idle words. How idle they 
are, the very action of the Tridentine Coun- 
cil shows, where it was agreed '' that Faith 
and Discipline should be treated of simulta- 
neously." ^ 

5 Buckley's "History of the Council of Trent," part ii. c. iv. 
Pallavicini, **Hist.," etc. lib. vi. c. vii. 



1 8 The English Reformation, 

As to his further assertion that there* was 
no purpose of touching the papacy and its 
claims, if that were true what means the 
pledge at Pisa of purification in the Head 
and members of the Church ? What mean 
the words of Gerson, the great chancellor 
of the University of Paris, when he says, 
making a strange distinction between the 
Catholic and the Apostolic Church, that of 
the former *' the Pope cannot be called the 
head, nor ought to be the head, but only 
Christ's vicar provided, nevertheless that the 
keys err not; and in this Church, and in its 
faith, every man may be saved, although, in 
all the world, no Pope should be found " ? 
Or again, when he says, ''There is another 
called the Apostolic CJinrch^ particular and 
private, included in the Catholic Church, com- 
posed of the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Prel- 
ates, and Ecclesiastics. This is wont to be 
called the Roman Church, of which the Pope 
is believed to be the head; but the other 
Ecclesiastics are included in it. This Church 
can err, can deceive and be deceived, can 



The English Reformation, tq 

fall into schism and heresy, can cease to 
be"? Or, once more, when he says, *'The 
Pope, as Pope is man, and as man so is he 
Pope, and as Pope he can sin, and as man 
he can err " ? * The way in which so great 
a theologian confounds the Curia Romana 
with the Apostolic Church, sad and wretched 
as it is, is nothing to us here: but who can 
say, in the face of such declarations, that no 
reform was thought of which would have 
touched the papacy ? Let me add, before I 
leave this matter, that Gerson in 1410 spoke 
no more strongly than Adrian VI. in 1522. 
These are his words: *' I say first, that if by 
the Roman Church is understood its head, 
that is the Pontiff, it is certain that he can 
err, even in matters pertaining to Faith, in 
asserting heresy by determination or decretal. 
For many Roman Pontiffs have been here- 
tics.""^ How strangely would these words of 
Pope and Doctor have struck on the ears 

6 See the passages, quoted, with many others by Gieseler, Hist, 
vol. iii. p. 222. Am. Ed. 

7 See Hardwick's "Reformation," p. 349, n. 5. First Ed. 



20 TJie English Reformation. 

of the prelates of the Vatican Council of 
1870! How do they shew what **new fash- 
ions in religion " pervade the Roman Church 
to-day ! How do they contradict the spe- 
cious words of Bossuet, words so unworthy 
of the eagle of Meaux! We are warranted, 
then, in saying that for more than three cen- 
turies before the Reformation there was a de- 
mand for reform in the Western Church so 
wide-spread as to be virtually universal; and 
that the demand involved not merely reform 
in life and discipline, but in doctrine, in wor- 
ship, and in the constitution of the Church 
with and under the papacy. 

Standing, now, on this unquestionable fact, 
we look two ways. We look back, and ask 
for the causes of this cry for reformation. We 
look forward, and inquire for the methods by 
which its attainment was attempted. First, 
then, let us look at the causes, and next at 
the methods. 

And, just here, in speaking of causes, let 
mc say a word as to the importance in his- 
torical studies of carefully distinguishing be- 



The English Reformation. 2r 

tween causes and occasions. An occasion 
furnishes the opportunity for action; but the 
causes of the action always He further back, 
and did they not exist the occasion would 
pass unheeded. There is no error more com- 
mon, none more disastrous to all true study 
of history, than this confusion of cause and 
occasion. As it will be necessary to recur 
to it again, I content myself with this bare 
statement here. 

From the manifold causes which wrought 
together to produce the demand for refor- 
mation, I shall select three — I believe the 
three most energetic and far-reaching — for 
examination. This selection must not be re- 
garded as exhaustive ; I trust it may be 
suggestive. 

And first, as to the papacy. No Roman 
Pontiff ever advanced loftier claims than did 
Boniface VIII., when, in 1302, he addressed to 
the whole Christian world the Bull Unam 
Sanctum; which (if there can be such a thing), 
is a cathedral utterance infallible and irreform- 
able. Not Gregory VII. nor Innocent III., 



22 The English Reformation, 

in their boldest declarations, ever went be- 
yond the sweeping assertions of that astound- 
ing document. If words have any meaning, 
it teaches the subjection of all temporal power 
to the spiritual as concentrated in the Pope; 
and the further subjection to him of every 
human being on pain of damnation/ 

The two centuries that followed that culmin- 
ating point for the Papacy witnessed its rapid 
and sure decline. The removal to Avignon 
took from it the prestige of the eternal city 
and the tomb of St. Peter. The seventy years* 
sojourn in that luxurious city brought more 
clearly to the light of day the corruptions and 
the cruelties of the papal court, and exhibited 
the Supreme Pontiff as the puppet of the French 
king, with some occasional intervention of the 

» See the bull quoted and condensed by Fleury, **Hist. Eccl.,'* 
lib. xc. c. xviii.; and compare his attempted explanations with 
the remarks of Archbishop Kenrick, m his ** Concio habcnda at 
non habit a in Concilio Vaticano.^^ This last is printed in Prof. 
Friedrich's ^*' Document a ad illustrandum^^'' ^\.Q,.^ I. Abtheilung, 
p. 189. A good translation of it is given in "An Inside View of 
the Vatican Council." See also, Ilussey, *'Rise of the Papal 
Power," p. 177. 



The English Reformation, 23 

German emperor. The great schism, lasting as 
it did through forty years, gave a still ruder 
shock to men's reverence for the papacy. How 
indeed could it retain in people's eyes the di- 
vinity with which it had hedged itself, when 
the scandalous spectacle of rival claimants 
(numbering at one time three) to the royal- 
ties and privileges of Peter, was patent to the 
world, while different sovereigns and nations 
attached themselves to the different claim- 
ants ? Justi at this moment, too, the nations 
of modern Europe were consolidating and set- 
tling their national life; so that this state of 
things *' could not fail to give an impulse, 
hitherto unknown in calling up the nation- 
ality of many a western state, in satisfying 
it that the papal rule was not essential to 
its welfare, and in thereby adding strength 
to local jurisdictions." ^ How strong this im- 
pulse was may be seen in the fact that at 
the Council of Constance (1417), the vote 
was not taken by individuals but by nations, 
namely the English, German, French, and 

9 Hardwick. 



24 TJie English Reformation. 

Italian. That method of voting was the pre- 
cursor of national reformations. To this must 
be added the personal character of many of 
the popes themselves.^^ In this rapid sketch 
I cannot undertake to name them, nor is it 
needful. To one who has waded through the 
details of vileness, the allusion is enough. To 
one who has not, the statement of the fact 
may well suffice. The result was that, for a 
far longer period before the actual reforma- 
tion than we are apt to think, the illusions 
that begirt the papacy were disappearing, its 
pretensions were questioned and sometimes 
despised, and its powers were limited and 
checked. 

It is obvious to name, as a second cause of 
the demand for reformation, the revival of let- 
ters and the impulse given by it to human in- 
tellect. There are, however, certain aspects 
of this subject which, common-place as the 

'"^ Mr. Blunt says, *' For sixty years Ixifore the final breach 
was made, there had not Ix^en a pope, except Clement VII., 
wh(i could l3e called ci>cn a decent Christian.^'' He gives, also, 
details, ** Reformation," p. 242. 



The English Reformation, 25 

subject itself may seem, are worth noticing 
somewhat in detail. 

The revival of learning in Italy, ^^and at 
that time Italy clearly led in everything," was 
in its temper and spirit simply pagan. Turn to 
the Decameron of Boccacio, "saturated from 
top to toe with the pagan spirit." Listen to 
an eclogue of Geraldini on the Passion, in 
which " our Blessed Lord is spoken of under 
the name of Daphnis; and * Daphnis in an 
odoriferous garden,' is the commencement of 
the Agony in Gethsemane;" while the Jews 
are made to cry out to Pilate, *^ Release Ba- 
rabbas and crucify Daphnis." Go to the court 
of the Medici, where you find adopted *'not 
merely the externals of the old existence, but 
the elernents, that is preoccupation with the 
present life, forgetfulness of the future, the 
appeal to the senses, the renunciation of 
Christianity." Remember that in Rome, in 
the time of Leo X., *'it was a characteristic 
of good society to dispute the fundamental 
principles of Christianity;" that '*at court they 
spoke of the institutions of the Catholic Church, 



26 The English Reformation, 

of passages of Holy Scripture, only in a tone of 
jesting, and that the mysteries of the Faith 
were held in derision." Hear what Pallavicini, 
Rome's chosen defender of the Council of Trent, 
says of this same Pontiff, who has sometimes 
been thought to have been a veritable pagan. 
** Scarcely had he issued from his infancy when 
he was admitted to the supreme senate of the 
Church, and he failed, thenceforth, in his duty, 
by neglecting the noblest line of knowledge, 
and the one most in accord with his profession. 
He failed much more, when, becoming chief 
of the Church, at the age of thirty-seven years, 
he not only continued to devote himself to 
curious researches in profane studies, but made 
the very palace of religion a rendezvous for 
men familiar with Greek fables and the charms 
of poesy. . . . He left the Church what he found 
it, that is to say almost destitute of great men, 
who, as the world came forth from so many 
centuries of barbarism, might have caused a 
revival of sacred erudition, as well as of that 
profane learning which was rising into life in 
every quarter." Well may Dr. Neale exclaim, 



The English Reformation, 27 

** Marvellous was the infatuation which could 
expend all its zeal and energies in the discov- 
ery of lost books of Tacitus or Livy, in the 
production of the purest Ciceronian Latin, in 
the erection of classical churches, and which 
could pay for all these pagan amusements and 
studies by the infamous mission of Tetzel, un- 
conscious of the approaching earthquake, re- 
garding the discontent of one German monk 
as something that might — it mattered not 
whether of the two — be hushed at the stake 
or silenced by the sop of a fat benefice." 

No wonder that even in Italy itself a reac- 
tion came; that good and thoughtful men tried 
** to stay the general corruption of the Church 
by the revived force of religious conviction." 
Honest as such attempts were, and hearty as 
should be the admiration they evoke, they 
failed, mainly for two reasons. The first is 
expressed in a saying attributed to Reginald 
Pole: ^^That men should content themselves 
with their own inward convictions, without con- 
cerning themselves to know if errors and abuses 
existed in the Church." The second is found 



28 TJie English Reformation. 

— using the word in a very different sense from 
that now given to it — in the irreformable char- 
acter of the Roman Court and its influence on 
the Church. Meantime, it is easy to see how, 
wholly aside from mere intellectual impulse, 
this outbreak of paganism at the very centre 
of civilization must tend to produce a reaction, 
and help to swell the cry for reformation. 

I ought not to dismiss this topic without at 
least a passing reference to the fact that this 
pagan tendency was always kept in check in 
England. Be the causes of this what they 
may — and they cannot be considered here — 
the- fact is indisputable. Be it true, that *'the 
marks not only of Italy, but of Boccacio, are 
stamped upon English letters from Chaucer 
onward," it is equally true that those marks 
are only on the surface; that they present the 
externals of the old existence but not its inner 
elements. Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, and 
Surrey may have sought their models and ma- 
terials in the pagan renaissance, but they never 
imbibed its moral foulness, the frivolity of its 
carpe diem^ or its scornful unbelief. John Colet, 



The English Reformation. 29 

the memorable Dean of St. Paul's, studied Greek 
in Italy and came back to lecture on St. Paul's 
Epistles at Oxford, in 1498.^ 

The third cause of the cry for a reformation, 
which I propose to notice, is one that touches 
depths in human character and life which the 
two just considered do not reach. It brings 
before us that ultimate and divinely ordered 
responsibility which rests on the reason and 
conscience of individuals in reference to their 
belief; and that necessity, which equally at- 
taches to individuals, of personal faith in, and 
personal communion with our Lord. The other 
causes of which I have spoken live in the world 
and share in its movement and life; this dwells 
apart in the retirement of each man's soul. 

It has often been observed that while the 
subtle mind of the East gave itself to the study 

1 Not to burden the page with too many references, I may still 
mention, Pallavicini, ''Hist, of Council of Trent," lib. i. c. 2.; 
Ranke, " Hist, of the Popes," book i. c. 2.; and book ii.; Taine's, 
**Eng. Literature," book ii. c. i. iv.; Neale, "Essays on Litur- 
giology," xiv.; Mr. Gladstone, ''Study on the Reformation," 
Contemp, Rev, Oct. 1878; Knight, "Life of Colet." 



30 The English Reformation, 

of Theology in its strict signification, the more 
practical mind of the West turned itself to 
Anthropology. *' The East," says Freeman, 
'Moves rather to meditate on God as He is, 
and on the facts of Christian doctrine as they 
stand in the Creed; the West contemplates 
more practically the great phenomena of 
Christian psychology, and the relations of 
man to God. The East has had its Athan- 
asius and its Andrew of Crete; the West its 
Augustine and Leo." ^ 

Then, besides, it is equally true that *' Chris- 
tian Anthropology ranges itself under two 
heads — objective and subjective. By the for- 
mer is meant the sacraments and ordinances 
of the Church, as such; by the latter, the 
progress of grace in the heart of each one 
of us."' 

Now it was mainly, or at least very largely, 
with the former of these heads, the objective 
view of Christian anthropology, that the med- 
iaeval divines concerned themselves. I do not 

2 Freeman's "Principles of Divine Service,'* vol. i. p. 274. 

3 Ffoulkcs, " Cliristcndom's Divisions," § 40. 



The English Reformation, 31 

forget that from time to time voices were 
heard inculcating personal earnestness in the 
religious life; least of all would I forget that 
noble band of mystical divines, the *^ Friends 
of God," as they were called, the precursors 
of the Reformation, whose mention brings 
back to our memories the names of Tauler, 
and Ruysbroek, and Wessel; nor yet do I 
forget, later on, that '' Oratory of Divine 
Love," which presents to us the names of 
Contarini, and Sadolet, and Pole. 

Still it remains true that the objective side 
of Anthropology, that which concerns itself 
with the objective grace of the Sacraments, 
and, therefore, deals especially with man's 
corporate life as a member of the Church 
of God, was the side which engaged the 
thoughts of the mediaeval divines of the West- 
ern Church. 

It is easy to see how this view might as- 
sume proportions which would obscure, if it 
did not displace, the recognition of the indi- 
vidual duty and the individual life. More es- 
pecially would this danger affect the popular 



32 The English Reformation. 

idea and estimate of religion. The well in- 
structed, the studious, the thoughtful might, 
and in many cases did, escape it. But with 
the body of the people such escape was an 
impossibility. Corporate membership in the 
Church as all in all, an exaggerated idea of 
the value of a perfunctory discharge of rou- 
tine and merely external duties, **the form 
of godliness without the power," must inevi- 
tably have been the outcome of all this. And 
this as much as, perhaps more than, anything 
else honeycombed the Church with corruption, 
and brought the social state of Europe to rot- 
tenness. Possibly nothing short of a passion- 
ate reclamation against such an overslaughing 
of personal religion and individual responsi- 
bility, so passionate that it disturbed the 
balance between the two sides of Christian 
Anthropology in an opposite direction from 
the one just indicated, could have roused the 
hearts and consciences of men. And such 
a reclamation was the real work of Luther. 
Such a reclamation was not wanting in Eng- 
land. 



The English Reformation. 33 

Such, then, being the need of reform in the 
sixteenth century, and such the cry — long con- 
tinued — for it, we are next to consider the meth- 
ods by which reform could be accomplished. 

The most obvious method, the one which 
would immediately occur to men's minds in 
those days, would be the convoking of a Gen- 
eral Council of Western Christendom. At- 
tempts in this direction had been made during 
the previous century, but they had accom- 
plished nothing. The Councils of Pisa, Con- 
stance and Basle — as has been already said — 
were all summoned in the interests of reform; 
they had met, discussed, and separated, without 
appreciable result. It is perfectly true that 
plans for ''constitutional reform" found ut- 
terance at Constance and Basle; but it is 
equally true that these plans were perpetually 
thwarted and brought to nought by papal 
violence or intrigue; and it is not to be for- 
gotten that, in 1460, Pius II. forbade any at- 
tempt ''to invoke the aid of councils under pain 
of damnation." All avenues of hope in that 
direction might well seem to be forever closed. 



34 The English Reformation, 

Still men did hope, even against hope. Con- 
stitutional reform had taken strong hold in 
France, and vitalized, though it did not origi- 
nate, the principles that underlaid the Gallican 
liberties. The accession of Pius III. to the 
pontifical throne, in 1503, gave a gleam of hope 
that something might yet be accomplished un- 
der the leadership of the Pope and the hier- 
archy. But that gleam expired when, after a 
reign of six and twenty days, he died. Then 
when the paganizing Leo X. was succeeded by 
the ''reforming pontiff," Adrian VI., men hoped 
agaixn. And surely when Adrian boldly as- 
serted that ''many abominations had existed 
for a long time, even in the holy see, yea, 
that all things had been grievously altered 
and perverted," there might well seem to be 
ground for hope. Be that as it may, Adrian's 
brief pontificate — reforming popes seem to 
have had short reigns — aroused men's hopes 
only to dash them down when it ended; and 
"the Roman Curia persisting in its resolu- 
tion to discountenance all change whatever, 
manifested no activity, till its slum- 



The English Reformation. 35 

bers were broken by the prospect of a general 
revolt."* 

Since, then, the papacy would neither in- 
stitute measures of reform nor allow them to 
be instituted, was all thought of reformation 
to be abandoned, and the Western Church 
to settle down into a unity of death ? That 
could not be. The needs were too profound, 
the stirrings of men's hearts were too thorough, 
the cry was too universal, to come to such an 
end. The haunting spectre, which the pontiffs 
tried to persuade themselves was but a ** hor- 
rible shadow and unreal mockery," would not 
down. 

Two — and only two — methods of reform re- 
mained after the failures of which I have been 
speaking. The first of these was a movement, 
or movements, under the conduct of individ- 
ual leaders. The other was based upon a 
recognition of the rights of autonomous na- 
tional churches; on *^ the principle of nation- 
ality as opposed to papal universalism"; and 
took its form accordingly. The former of 

■* See Hardwick's ** Reformation," Introduction. 



36 The English Reformation, 

these methods shaped the Reformation in Ger- 
many and Switzerland, giving to each the 
name of its especial leader ; the latter was 
pursued in England, and kept our Anglican 
Reformation from bearing the impress or the 
name of any single master. And this national 
idea had, a century earlier, been recognized, 
as I have already said, at the Council of Con- 
stance; where the '^four nations," Italian, Ger- 
man, French, and English were held to pos- 
sess equal rights, and no subject could be 
acted on by the Council till it had been 
accepted by a majority of the *^ nations." 
The great John Gerson, also, had asserted 
the same principle, saying that ^^ The Church 
may be reformed by parts: that this is neces- 
sary; and that it may be accomplished by 
provincial councils." Nor was this an after- 
thought of that time, or of times that fol- 
lowed. It was a recurrence to the practice 
of the *' purest ages of the faith." In all 
time and everywhere national synods had dis- 
cussed and dealt with the heresies, errors, 
and evils of national churches, whether such 



The English Reformation. 37 

heresies, errors, and evils had grown up from 
within, or been thrust in from without. The 
method was an old one revived, not a new 
one invented.^ 

Let me sum up these thoughts concerning 
methods of reform, in the wise and weighty 
words of Archbishop Laud: ^*It is true, a 
general council free and entire, would have 
been the best remedy and most able for a 
gangrene that had spread so far and eaten so 
deep into Christianity. But, what ! should we 
have suffered this gangrene to endanger life 
and all, rather than be cured in time by a 
physician of a weaker knowledge and a less 
able hand } We live to see since, if we had 
stayed and expected a general council, what 
manner of one we should have had, if any; for 
that at Trent was neither general nor free;^ 
and for the errors Rome had contracted, it 

5 Hardwick "On the Articles," chap. i. sec. 2. Laud against 
Fisher (Oxf. 1839), PP* 122-129. 

6 Compare Bp. Bull's words, " Tridentina conventio quidvis 
potius quam generate concilium dicenda sit,^^ — ^^Defens. Fid, 
Nic, Proemiumy'' § 8. 



38 The Eitglish Reformation. 

confirmed them, it cured them not. And yet 
I much doubt whether even that council (such 
as it was) would have been called, if some 
provincial and national synods, under supreme 
regal power, had not first set upon this great 
work of reformation; which I heartily wish had 
been as orderly and happily pursued as the 
work was right Christian and good in itself." 

**I make no doubt but that, as the universal 
Catholic Church would have reformed herself, 
had she been in all parts freed of the Roman 
yoke, so, while she was for the most in those 
western parts under that yoke, the Church of 
Rome was, if not the only, yet the chief hin- 
drance of reformation. And then, in this sense, 
it is more than clear, that if the Roman Church- 
will neither reform nor suffer reformation, it is 
lawful for any other particular Church to re- 
form itself, so long as it doth it peaceably and 
orderly, and keeps itself to the foundation and 
free from sacrilege." ' 

And here I close this preliminary sketch, 
which, nevertheless, has seemed necessary 

' ** Conference," ut sup. pp. 127, 129. 



The English Reformation, 39 

that we may intelligently approach the top- 
ics of which I propose to treat ; the treat- 
ment of which, though it will by no means 
be a connected, chronological history of the 
English Reformation, will, I hope, serve to 
shew how that reformation has placed within 
the reach of the Churches in communion 
with our English mother, ''the three great 
springs of power which have been given sep- 
arately to others — the simplicity of a pure 
creed, the strength of a continuous organi- 
zation, and the freedom of personal faith." ^ 

8 Dean Boyle's " Farewell address to his parishioners at Kid- 
derminster." 



LECTURE 11. 

Evils to be reformed— ACxEnts— Prin- 
ciple ACTED ON — Sources of In- 
formation; AND ALLEGED 
Variations. 



LECTURE 11. 

EVILS TO BE REFORMED— AGENTS—PRIN^ 
CIPLE ACTED ON—SOURCES OF IN- 
FORMATION; AND ALLEGED 
VARIATIONS. 

TN my first lecture I called attention to cer- 
tain general facts, not specifically con- 
nected with the Anglican Reformation, which, 
nevertheless, it was needful to consider in 
order that we might approach intelligently 
the topic in hand. Turning now to that 
topic, I must ask you, at the outset, to go 
along with me in the endeavor to point out 
and, so far as may be, to classify, the evils 
with which reform, if it were to be to any 
purpose, must necessarily deal. A real refor- 
mation must concern itself with actually ex- 
isting evils; and the lines of its outworking 
must be settled and determined by such evils. 
Any other reformation would be so entirely 



44 The English Reformation. 

theoretical and doctriftaire in character, that 
it would have neither practical effect nor abid- 
ing life. The grandest exhibition of the dif- 
ference between such methods which history 
records was given to the world, when philoso- 
phers were dreaming over plans for reforming 
the evils that weighed down the nations and 
accomplished nothing; and the disciples of 
Christ's religion grappled with the evils prac- 
tically, and did the work. Nor could a mere 
theoretical reformation, however perfect in its 
arrangements, have commended itself to the 
convictions or commanded the support of the 
English people; a people always caring less 
for logical consistency than for practical result. 

What then were the ecclesiastical evils, 
wrongs, perversions of true and good things 
that were pressing on Englishmen in the six- 
teenth century; and can they be classified in 
any intelligent fashion } 

Let us go back, just here, to a memorable 
day, Feb. 6, 15 12, when John Colct, Dean of 
St. Paul's, preached the sermon before the 
Convocation of the province of Canterbury. 



The English Reformation, 45 

I have called the day a memorable one; it 
was made so by that outspoken sermon. The 
assembly before which Colet stood was most 
truly representative. There sat Warham, the 
Archbishop, the friend of the '' new learn- 
ing," the patron and protector of Erasmus; 
Fitz-James (promoted for his secular services 
to Rochester, Chichester, and London suc- 
cessively), the embodiment of the stiffest 
and most starched conservatism of the day, 
and so fierce against all heresy that An- 
dreas Ammonius writes, in ghastly jesting, to 
Erasmus, that ^*wood is scarce and dear in 
London because so much is used in burning 
heretics"; Stanley of Ely, a notorious and 
open profligate; a nameless bishop, who of- 
fered to Erasmus a benefice and a large sum 
of money if he would become his tutor for 
a year; a bishop satirized by More, under the 
name of Posthumus, as distinguished from 
other bishops, who were usually selected at 
random, by the exceptional care exhibited 
in his case in selecting a man hopelessly ig- 
norant and stupid; there were bishops who 



46 The English Reformation. 

owed their rapid translations and promo- 
tions not at all to successful discharge of 
episcopal duty, but ^Svhose benefices were 
the reward of purely secular services, and 
who, consequently, had hardly a chance of 
discharging with diligence their spiritual and 
pastoral functions"; and, to name no more, 
there was Wolsey, with all his course before 
him, just beginning to tread ^^the ways of 
glory," and sound '*the depths and shoals 
of honor," destined to find to his sorrow, 

" How wretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on prmces* favors." 

There were vacant places, also, in that as- 
sembly, that had their own tale to tell. The 
sees of Bath and Wells and of Worcester were 
held in those days by two non-resident Italian 
prelates, whose main connection with their 
dioceses seems to have been to receive from 
them the revenues which they spent at Rome. 
These instances exhibit the culmination of one 
line of papal interference, and that a disastrous 
one, in England; though it is not to be for- 



The English Reformation. 47 

gotten that more than these two prelates then 
held their sees, in the very teeth of the stat- 
utes of the realm, by papal provision.^ 

Of those who composed the Lower House 
there were doubtless some whose sympathies 
went with Colet, not only in the practical 
matters touched on in his sermon, but also 
in his dislike of the new theology of the 
schoolmen, and his desire ''to restore the 
theological studies that were founded upon 
the Scriptures and the primitive Fathers"; in 
his opposition to the compulsory celibacy of 
the clergy; in his objections to the worship 
of images; in his denunciation of ''anxious 
and frequently repeated confession"; in his 

9 This was the case with Sherburn of Chichester, Oldham of 
Exeter, Mayew or Mayo of Hereford, Smith of Lincoln, etc. 
The two Italians were Adrian Castello, Bishop of Bath and 
Wells, and Sylvester Gigles, or Gigliis, of Worcester, who suc- 
ceeded his uncle, an Italian, in the see, and was himself succeeded 
by another Italian, after an interval of about two years, during 
which time the see was administered by still another Italian, 
a Cardinal at Rome. Non-residence was thus the rule at Wor- 
cester for nearly forty years. See Le Neve's ^' Fasti Ecclesice 
Anglicance,^^ and Seebohm's "Oxford Reformers," pp. 224, ff. 



48 The English Reformation, 

practice of saying mass ^^only upon Sundays 
and great festivals"; and in those educa- 
tional and religious reforms which appear in 
all the arrangements of his school in London, 
to which he gave the name of the great apos- 
tle, whom, to use his own words, he **so dearly 
loved and admired."^® 

But besides these there must have been 
others — probably a much more numerous body 
than the former — to whom such thoughts were, 
to say nothing of principles and acts, blank 
and atrocious heresy; men who ** hated the 
pernicious innovation of the Greek tongue," 
and sneered at Erasmus, as Grcecidiis iste; to 
whom the study of the Scriptures was as '^the 
root of all evil"; who accepted the specula- 
tions of the schoolmen, even before they had 
been petrified at Trent, as articles of faith; 
and to whom not the sticcessional Church, 
semper et tibiqite, but the present Church, 
under the headship of the Roman pontiff, 
was the ** pillar and ground of the truth." 

Before such an assembly the brave Dean 

^0 " Ixlters of Erasmus," quoted by Knight. 



The English Reformation. 49 

of St. Paul's stood up and spoke of the need 
of reformation. He touches, naturally, on evils 
of practice rather than anything else; but the 
dealing with those must have brought in its 
train the dealing with doctrines from which 
they originated, or with which they were close- 
ly connected. His beadroU of evils is a most 
striking one, and contains the justification of 
many complaints in later years which are now 
sometimes spoken of as mere pretences and vain 
shews. But here it is not a layman who speaks 
to laymen, or a body of laymen which speaks 
to the sovereign; it is a cleric, high in position 
and pure in life, who speaks to a body of cler- 
gymen. 

When Colet comes to the second part of his 
noble sermon, he begins by asserting that what 
is needed to effect reform is not the enactment 
of new laws (of which he says — in words that 
are not unfitting to our own days — there are 
enough and to spare), but the faithful ap- 
plication of existing laws; while his line of 
remark makes it clear that he has specially 
in mind the ancient canons and the early 



50 The English Reformation. 

councils. He denounces, in terse and cogent 
phrases, rash ordinations of unlearned and evil 
living priests; promotions not for merit but 
by favor, so that ** instead of elders, boys, in- 
stead of wise men, fools, instead of good men, 
evil ones rule and reign"; simony which is a 
plague and a contagion among priests; non- 
residence of those having cure of souls with 
all its train of evils; the secularity of the 
clergy, and their evil manners; the equal sec- 
ularity of monks; uncanonical election of bish- 
ops more concerned with earthly things than 
with those of Christ; episcopal non-residence 
with its neglect of preaching and ministering 
sacraments, and its lack of care for the poor; 
the squandering of the patrimony of the Church; 
the corruptions of the ecclesiastical courts with 
their inventions for getting money and their 
foul avarice; and the neglect of provincial as 
well as general councils.^ Had the sugges- 

* See the Sermon in Knight's ** Life of Colet," p. 238; Seebohm's 
** Oxford Reformers" etc., p. 230. I wish we could say that the 
Reformation extinguished all these ingrained evils, especially those 
of episcopal and clerical non-residence and pluralities. But the 



The English Reformation, 51 

tions of Colet been acted on, there would 
have been less occasion for the accusation of 
the Ordinaries by the Commons in 1532. 

I have dwelt thus long on the scene and the 
sermon of Feb. 6, 15 12, because they present 
so distinct a picture of the then present, and 
afford so clear an indication of the coming fu- 
ture of the Church of England. They shew 
what thoughts were in the minds of thought- 
ful men; what ideas were coming to the front; 
what collisions of intellectual and religious prin- 
ciples and forces were impending. They illus- 
trate the three causes of the cry for reform 
spoken of in my last lecture. They intimate 
the method of reform that will be adopted, 
the action of a National Church in a National 
Synod. They suggest the appeal, by which 
that reform will shape itself, to Holy Script- 
ure and ancient authors. Nor is it difficult to 

not unfounded complaints of the Puritans at the Hampton Court 
Conference, in 1604, and the wretched facts of the eighteenth cen- 
tury shew how rooted these last named evils were. See Cardwell's 
"Conferences," c. iv.; and Overton and Abbey, *< History of the 
English Church in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii. c. i. 



52 The English Reformation, 

see the foreshadowing of the lines which it will 
take, and the evils with which it will deal, evils 
which I will state in the words of Mr. Blunt: 
*^The organic or constitutional abuses, indicated 
by so many writers, as eating out the heart of 
the Church; the doctrinal errors which had 
grown up in mediaeval times; and the supersti- 
tions with which religion had been burdened;" 
to use the familiar phraseology of the preface to 
our own Prayer Book, abuses and corruptions 
in Discipline, in Doctrine, and in Worship. ^ 

But there are still other things to be taken 
into account before we have completed our 
proposed view of the lines in which reform 
will run, and the forces that will be brought 
to bear upon it. Many misrepresentations of 
the real character of the Anglican Reforma- 
tion arc due to misconceptions in regard to 
the matters of which I proceed to speak. 

It requires no very extended or careful view 
of the usurpations of the Papacy, to see that 
they everyw^hcrc interfered with the ancient 
and established rights of rulers, and the rcla- 

2 Blunt, *' Reformation," p. 21. 



The English Reformation, 53 

tions of subjects to the civil government. Such 
interference enters into the Roman ideal of 
the practical working of the Church to-day; 
and it was far less an ideal and more a reality 
in the sixteenth century. ^ 

In England, the ancient prerogatives and 
rights of the Sovereign in regard to the ap- 
pointment of bishops, the holding of synods, 
the determining all criminal causes in the 
courts of the realm, had been seriously inter- 

3 It is worth while to compare the claims of Boniface VIII., in 
the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302, of Paul IV., in the Bull Cum ex 
Apostolatus Officio^ as late as 1558, of Gregory XI., Gregory XII., 
Pius v., and Urban VIII., in the Bull In Ccena Domini^ from 1372 
to 1627, and of Pius IX., in the Syllabus of 1864, with the Irish 
Remonstrance of 1 66 1, the Declaration of the Irish Roman Cath- 
olic Committee in 1757, the Protestation of the entire Roman 
Communion in England in 1 789, the Synodical Declaration of the 
Irish Bishops in 1810, and the Testimony of Bishop Doyle and 
others before the Committee of the House of Lords in 1825-26. 
The comparison will shew that opposition to papal claims which 
was not formally condemned during the middle ages, and, even 
down to our own times, is now "judicially extinguished within 
the papal Church, by the recent decrees of the Vatican Council," 
in 1870. See Gladstone's *« Newest Fashions" etc.; *« Janus;" 
Prof. Friedrich's ^' Document'a,^^ 



54 The Eizglish Reformation, 

fered with by papal encroachments; and the 
relations of the subject to the civil government 
had been equally interfered with by the trial 
of criminous clerks, and persons claiming bene- 
fit of clergy, not in the civil but in the eccles- 
iastical courts with final appeal to Rome. I 
am now merely mentioning instances, in a gen- 
eral way, and in illustration of the statement 
just made. The subject must come up again 
in more specific detail. 

How were these wrongs — for whether the 
older state of things was, in itself considered, 
good or bad is nothing to us here; if good the 
unlawful change only made it bad, if bad the 
same change did not make it better; — how were 
these wrongs to be righted ? Surely only by 
that power whose ancient immunities had been 
attacked, that is by the civil power, vested 
in the Sovereign and Parliament of England. 
To that extent then the civil power vmst par- 
ticipate in any practical reformation dealing 
with actual wrongs and evils. 

But this is not all. The universal theory 
in Europe — and in that word one includes 



The English Reformation, 55 

England — in the sixteenth century, was that 
spiritual sentences and laws could not stand 
on their spiritual character alone, but must 
also have the force and penalties of civil law 
annexed to them. They must be made ef- 
fective in foro contentioso, by compulsory pen- 
alties of the state, as well as in foro con-- 
scientiaey by spiritual penalties of the Church.* 
The right or the wrong of this theory is, again, 
nothing to us just here. All we have to do 
with is the fact that it existed — and had long 
been in existence — in the sixteenth century; 
that it was universally held; and that it must 
enter as a factor into any plan of reform. It 
is needless to add that the civil power is thus 
again brought prominently forward. 

The lines, therefore, on which we may ex- 
pect the Anglican Reformation to move will 
be constitutional, ritual, and doctrinal. And 
the forces which will be brought to bear upon 
the work must, from the necessities of the 
case and the universal theory of the time, be 

4 See Wharton's "Troubles and Trials of Abp. Laud," ed. 
1695, p. 309. 



56 The Eftglisk Reformation, 

ecclesiastical and civil, or, if the phrase is pre- 
ferred, spiritual and temporal. The compre- 
hension and application of these plain facts and 
principles will brush away a good deal of vague 
and declamatory talk about the Reformed 
Church of England being a parliamentary 
Church and a creation of the State; and will 
justify the terse but exhaustive statement of 
Archbishop Laud, *' In the Reformation, . . our 
princes had their parts and the clergy theirs."^ 
I called attention, in my first lecture, to the 
important fact that synodical action, as over 
against individual action, had preserved our 
Reformed Church from taking on the impress 
of the mind, or receiving the name of any 
single leader. The considerations just brought 
to your notice illustrate the same truth more 
fully. But something more is necessary to 
present it in its completeness. Keeping our 
eyes fixed on England, we find (not forgetting 
the general causes, already mentioned, of the 
universal cry for reform), three elements at 
work which deserve careful attention. 

6 Laud, **Conf. with Fisher," p. 127. 



The English Reformation. 57 

The first of these is that ever increasing 
opposition to the usurpations of the papacy 
which was evinced by the great body of the 
bishops, and which could not but be felt most 
deeply by the civil power. This opposition, 
as will appear more fully in due time, had 
come to the surface on many occasions an- 
terior to its final explosion in the sixteenth 
century. So long, however, as the protracted 
contest between the sovereign and the barons 
was going on, with its engrossing interests 
and its varying fortunes, such an explosion 
was impossible; while the two great agen- 
cies of papal encroachments, force and fraud, 
had '* ample room and verge enough " to 
work in. 

The second element is found in the im- 
proved condition of the universities, in the 
abandonment of mere scholasticism, and the 
study of Holy Scripture and the Early Fa- 
thers; and would tell, if not entirely yet, 
mainly on scholars. 

The third appears *'in the direct influence 
which was exerted by the circulation in Eng- 



58 The English Refo^^mation. 

land, — beginning as early as 1520, — of Lu- 
theran tracts and other publications of a simi- 
lar character"; and would naturally take up 
into itself whatever remained of the '* earlier 
Lollard movement, and thus affect the great 
body of the people."^ 

Here were great possibilities for good, per- 
haps we may say almost equal possibilities 
for evil. Had any one of these elements be- 
come effective, to the exclusion of the other 
two, we might have seen a reform simply re- 
jecting the papal claims and regulating the 
hierarchy, while doctrine and ritual remained 
untouched; or one dealing exclusively with 
doctrine, and putting ritual and the hierarchy 
to one side; or, lastly, one without guidance 
or direction, and losing itself in a confusion 
little short of anarchy. 

The overruling providence of God averted, 
in good measure, these several dangers; while 
from the joint operation of all those ** agencies 
combined, and modified through combination," 

« Hardwick, ** Reformation," p. i8i, ff. This classification of 
causes peculiar to England is taken from him. 



The English Reformation. 59 

working on the lines, in the methods, by the 
forces already indicated, rose the complex 
structure known as the ** Reformed Church 
of England"; whose eventful history has, 
therefore, ever since exhibited the working 
of various elements, instinct with life and 
spirit; sometimes, indeed, jarring with each 
other, but never, God be thanked — except with 
some ungoverned spirits — destroying unity.*^ 

M. Guizot, in his History of Civilization,^ 
has an observation which seems to me worth 
quoting at this point. He says, ^*When we 
look at the civilizations which have preceded 
that of Modern Europe, whether in Asia or 
elsewhere, including even those of Greece and 
Rome, it is impossible not to be struck with 
the unity of character which reigns among 
them. Each appears as though it had ema- 
nated from a single fact, a single idea." And 
then, after shewing how entirely different 
European civilization is in this regard, in its 
principles of organization, its sentiments, its 

^ Hardwick, "Reformation," pp. 179-194. 
8 Lect. ii. Am. Ed. p. 35 fF. 



6o The English Reformation, 

opinions, its literature, he adds, *^ While in 
other civilizations the exclusive domination, 
or at least the excessive preponderance, of a 
single principle, of a single form, led to tyr- 
anny, in modern Europe the diversity of the 
elements of social order, the incapability of 
any one to exclude the rest gave birth to the 
liberty which now prevails." 

I am aware that comparisons do not, as it 
is said, go on all fours. They do, however, 
illustrate. And unless I greatly err, we find 
in Guizot's striking contrast a very apt illus- 
tration of the difference between the Early 
Church on the one side and the Modern Tri- 
dentine Church on the other, between the 
results of the Anglican and the Continental 
Reformations. In the Tridentine Church and 
the Continental Reformations, such a predom- 
inance of one idea, such a dependence on one 
master, such an assertion of one thing as the 
articiihis stantis vel cadentis Ecclesicey as that 
when that one master falls, that one idea 
and article give way, then the tyranny, so en- 
gendered, passes into utter license. In the 



The English Reformation, 6i 

Early Church and the Anglican Reformation, 
such an absence of a single master, and of 
one overmastering idea, such a balance and 
reciprocal influence of elements and factors, 
as that permanent tyranny becomes well-nigh 
impossible, and there can be no break down 
that will involve everything in ruin. 

We have now reached the point where a 
question arises as to the principle by which 
measures of reform were regulated and shaped. 
This is a most important inquiry. For no 
intelligent estimate can be formed of any 
movement, however clearly we may have be- 
fore our minds agencies, methods, and factors, 
until we have also an equally clear insight 
into the principle that underlies and guides it. 

In the present case this principle is not dif- 
ficult to find. Colet stated it in advance, 
when, before the sixteenth century had fairly 
opened, he wrote to Erasmus of his earnest 
wish to recall men to *^the Scriptures and the 
primitive Fathers." It was a voice from Ox- 
ford repeating the cry of Bernard uttered 
nearly four hundred years before. It was the 



62 The English Reformation, 

watchword of our Reformation. It is heard 
over and over again as the years go by. The 
fact is too patent to need more than a rapid 
summary of its proofs. Beginning, then, with 
the action touching the papal jurisdiction and 
the royal supremacy from 1531 to 1533, we 
pass on to the Ten Articles of 1536, The In- 
stitution of a Christian Man in 1537, The 
Erudition of a Christian Man in 1543, the 
Homilies of 1547, The Act Ordering Admin- 
istration of the Eucharist in both Kinds of 
1547, The Preface to the Prayer Book of 
1549, The Ordinal of 1550, the Rcfoj^inatio 
Legtcm of 1552, the Act of Supremacy of 1559, 
the Homilies of 1562, the Canon of Preachers 
in 1 57 1, and we find, all through, the appeal 
to Holy Scriptures and the Early Church rec- 
ognized and applied in synodical or quasi 
synodical action. So that **in England the 
supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture was 
maintained, not against a Catholic tradition 
teaching the same doctrines as Scripture itself 
and therefore strictly confirmatory of Script- 
ure; but against a tradition imagined to con- 



The English Reformation, 63 

vey articles of faith in addition to those which 
Scripture contained."^ Around these synodi- 
cal acts gather a host of Anglican divines, 
whose names require no mention. The coii- 
sensus of synods and divines is clear, uniform, 
continuous, and, I may say, unanimous. 

Nor is there anything new and of the nature 
of a discovery in all this. It is neither more 
nor less than the rule of ** universality, an- 
tiquity and consent," laid down by Vincent 
of Lerins, more than a thousand years before 
our Reformation.^® As many persons seem to 
have taken a crude and unintelligent view of 
this canon of Vincent, let me, especially be- 
cause of its connection with our own work of 
reform, call your attention to the safeguards 
and limitations under which he sets it forth. 

First, he ** guards carefully against being 

9 Palmer, «* Treatise of the Church of Christ," vol. i. p. 454. 
Am. Ed. He quotes the title of a treatise of Dr. Smythe (a 
papist), ^^De Veritatibus non Scriptis^^^ as shewing the animus 
of the papal party. See also J. J. Blunt, "Right Use of the 
Early Fathers," lect. i. 

10 <« Commonitoriumf^^ c. xxvii. fF. 



64 The English Reformation, 

supposed for one instant" to deny the suffi- 
ciency of Scripture, or '*to put Scripture and 
Tradition on a par, or to amalgamate them 
like two equal co-ordinate elements in one 
Rule of Faith." ^ After saying that it has 
ever been the custom in the Church to prove 
the Faith *' first by the authority of the Divine 
Canon, then by the tradition of the Catholic 
Church," he goes on to explain what he means 
by this. '^Not that the Canoii alone is not self- 
sufficient for all purposes: but because very 
many persons interpreting the Divine Words 
according to their own judgment conceive va- 
rious opinions and errors, and that therefore 
it is necessary that the understanding of the 
heavenly Scriptures be directed to the one rule 
of ecclesiastical meaning; chiejly, however, in 
those questions on which rest the foundations 
of the entire Catholic Faith." ^ 

Thus by anticipation he asserts with us the 
supremacy and sufficiency of the written Word; 
and denies beforehand the Roman doctrine of 

» Owen, **Int. to Dogmat. Thcol.," p. 35. 
* *' Ct?///w.," c. xxix. 



The English Reformation, 65 

to-day, that the Word of God is contained '' in 
written books and unwritten traditions;"^ and 
would employ what he calls tradition (and 
what he means by that we shall see imme- 
diately), only as a help in attaining the mean- 
ing of Scripture, and, therefore, as entirely 
subsidiary to it. 

Secondly, in shewing what he means by this 
subsidiary tradition and how he would apply 
it, he says: *^And if at any time a part 
shall have rebelled against universality, novel- 
ty against antiquity, the dissent of one or a 
few. . . against the consent of all, or at least 
by far the majority, ... let them prefer the in- 
tegrity of the universality to the corruption 
of the past. In which same universality, let 
them prefer the religion of antiquity to the 
profaneness of novelty; and also, in antiquity 
itself, let them first of all prefer the general 
decrees, if there be any, of a universal Coun- 
cil to the temerity of one or of very few; then 
in the next place, if that does not exist, the 
sentiments of many and great masters agree- 

3 Trent, Sess. iv. 



(^ The English Reformation, 

ing with each other."* Thus he refuses to make 
universality at any one time^ without regard 
to continuousness from the beginning, a test 
of truth; so holding together the ubique and 
the semper y and showing that what he means 
by tradition is not some uncertain unwritten 
thing declared somehow, by the Church at 
different times; but the consentient written, 
documentary testimony of universal Councils 
and ** great masters." 

And, finally, to shew under what limitations 
his rule is to be applied, he says: *^ Which an- 
cient consent of the Holy Fathers is to be in- 
vestigated and followed by us with great zeal 
not in all questio7ts of the Divine Law, but 
only, at least principally, in the Rule of Faith!' ^ 
Thus he recognizes room for freedom of opin- 
ion, while still there is unity in the Faith. 
The position taken is throughout a prophetic 
protest against the doctrine of the *'Holy 
Roman Church" in and since the Council of 
Trent, and a prophetic defence of the English 
Reformation. After all, this is no more than 

4 '' ComvionV c. xxvii. ^ ''Common.'' c. xxviii. 



The English Reformation^ 6y 

what appears in the action of the Council of 
Nicaea touching the creed, and in its well- 
known sixth canon; and in the rule of Tertul- 
lian, '^The first is true, the later is spuriojus."^ 

It is the more necessary to put this subject 
clearly and distinctly before the minds of all 
who may in any way be called on to maintain 
or defend the position of our Church, because 
the conditions under which we must do our 
work are no longer what they were three cen- 
turies ago.' 

This change of conditions is a radical one; 
although it only affects the appeal to the 
transmitted testimony of the Church. At the 
time of the Reformation Rome asserted, as 
she asserts now, that God's Word is con- 

^ Id esse verum quodcunque primum; id esse adulterum qtiod- 
cunque posterius. Adv. Prax. i. 

7 Nearly forty years ago, the then Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Kaye, 
wrote words which now seem prophetic. "If we mistake not the 
signs of the times, the period is not far distant when the whole 
controversy between the English and Romish Churches will be 
revived, and all the points in dispute again brought under review. 
Of these points none is more important than the question respect* 
ing Tradition." Kaye*s " TertuUian," p. 281. 



68 The English Reformation. 

tained in Holy Scripture and in unwritten 
tradition and that the former was insufificient 
without the latter. We, on the contrary, 
maintained, as we do now, that God's Word 
is contained in Holy Scripture alone, and that 
this Divine Canon is entirely sufficient in itself 
to settle all controversies; but that when the 
meaning of the Divine Canon is disputed then, 
as subsidiary and auxiliary to it, we appeal to 
what may be called tradition if you will, but 
what might better be termed historic testi- 
mony. This was, as we have seen, the old 
Vincentine rule from which Rome had de- 
parted. 

Still, the nature of the appeal to tradi- 
tion or testimony was not at the era of the 
Reformation a point in dispute, at least not 
formally. On either side the appeal was to 
documentary testimony, acts of Councils and 
writings of Fathers. No doubt there was all 
along a tendency manifesting itself among Ro- 
man controversialists to make the conscious- 
ness of the existing Church, its present theory 
in doctrine or anything else, the true interpre- 



The English Reformation, 69 

ter of tradition, let documentary testimony be 
what it might. No doubt, at first, this ten- 
dency was no more than a tendency, and even 
Trent asserted, that the tradition ** must be 
preserved by continuous successio7z in the Cath- 
olic Church." 

This tendency has, however, in our day 
taken definite shape, and become to a large 
extent a rule; and the old historical appeal is 
likely to be pretty much abandoned. Indeed 
it has been lately asserted, permissu superi- 
orum, that ** where a thing is once commonly 
accepted in the Church, this common testi- 
mony of the living Church, is an infallible 
proof that this opinion is contained in tradi- 
tion and needs no documents of antiquity." 
When history can thus be manufactured to 
order, the historical argument becomes less 
than nugatory. But this universal solvent, 
the arcanum magnum of Romanism, had not 
been brought out at the time of our Refor- 
mation.^ 

8 Cardinal Newman has professed his weariness of our anti- 
quarianism; the Abbe Martin enlarges on the uncertainty of 



70 The English Reformation. 

Method, agencies, lines of reform and gov- 
erning principle reduced to a practical rule, 
being now set forth, the next question is, 
where are we to look for results; how are we 
to be informed correctly as to what our Ref- 
ormation effected ? This may seem a simple 
and almost needless question; but I can as- 
sure you that mistaken or heedless answers 
to it have been the occasion of very great 
confusion. And yet it cannot require much 
or troublesome consideration to decide how it 
should be answered. Synodal acts, authorita- 
tive documents, in some cases (for the reasons 
already given) acts of parliament, and, some- 
times, the matured views of leaders are the 

historical estimates of character, as if that had anything to do 
with documentary testimony as to fact; and so long ago as 1854, 
a writer in the Revue des deux Monde s said, with evident satis- 
faction, " Le catholique, prenant le dogme tel que le temps Pa 
fait, est, en un sens, bien plus pres de la grande philosophie que 
le protestant, qui cherche ^ venir sans cesse a. une pretendue 
formule prifuitive du Christianisme." No doubt he is. But sure- 
ly *' dogma such as time has made it," is not quite an equivalent 
term to the ** Faith once [for all] given to the Saints." See Bp. 
Kaye*s excellent remarks in his ** Tertullian," pp. 284-86. 



The English Reformation. 71 

only sources of real information as to the re- 
sults of the Anglican Reformation. Instead 
of this method of research and appeal, so ob- 
viously right and trustworthy, how often has 
some obscure and worthless treatise, some 
chance expression in a hastily written letter, 
some crude opinion, uttered without much 
thought and afterwards retracted, been pressed 
into prominence as exhibiting such results. 
Nor is it to be forgotten that the indiscrim- 
inating antiquarianism of individuals and so- 
cieties, by raking out of obscurity a mass of 
material that might better have been left in 
well-deserved oblivion, has greatly increased 
this misleading confusion. 

Let me mention an instance which strikingly 
illustrates what has just been said. Lord Ma- 
caulay once asserted that ** Cranmer, on one 
important occasion, plainly avowed his con- 
viction that, in the primitive times, there was 
no distinction between bishops and priests, 
and that the laying on of hands was altogether 
superfluous." ^ 

9 "History of England," vol. i. p. 39. Am. Ed. 



72 The English Refortnation, 

Now what Lord Macaulay said, is in the 
letter, undoubtedly true. But the conclusions 
drawn from it are as wide of the truth as they 
well can be. The words quoted from Cranmer 
occur in a paper drawn up in 1540, and doubt- 
less express his opinion at that time. But, it 
must be remembered, he then held that scho- 
lastic theory in which he had been trained, 
that there is only a difference in office^ but 
none at all in order, between bishops and 
priests — a theory common to Rome and Gen- 
eva, if, indeed, Geneva did not receive it di- 
rectly from Rome; and he also must have 
held, as Eugenius IV. had ruled, that the es- 
sential thing in ordination was, not the impo- 
sition of hands, but the porrectio tnstnimen- 
torum, the delivery of the sacred vessels, etc.^® 

»o See Pearson, ** Minor Works, " vol. i. pp. 274, 275; Charles Les- 
lie's "Discourse on Qualifications to administer the Sacraments,'* 
Works, vol. ii., p. 731; Bishop Charles Wordsworth's ** Discourse 
on the Scottish Reformation," App. c. vi. The words of Eugenius 
IV. are, ** Sextum Sacramentum est Ordinis, cujus materia est 
illud per cujus traditioncm confertur Ordo; sicut presbyterattis 
traditur per calicis cum vino et patenne cum pan^ porrectionem." 
Perrone distinctly says, that ** almost all the ancient scholastic 



The English Reformation. 73 

Such was the view held (not, as he says, 
'*temerariously"), by Cranmer in 1540. But 
let us pass over ten years, and those years of 
most careful and laborious study,^ and what 
do we then find as his matured and final opin- 
ion, expressed, not in a hastily written paper, 
but in what was to be a Formulary of the 
Church, the Preface to the Ordinal ? Why, 
that bishops and priests are distinct orders as 
well as offices in the Church; and also that for 
conferring those orders imposition of hands 
must be had.*^ I need hardly ask what is to 
be said of the propriety of quoting an early 
and evidently doubtfully-held opinion, as if 
it were the settled view of the person utter- 
ing it, in the face of a precisely opposite opin- 
ion, put forth as solemnly as it was possi- 
ble it should be, after ten years of* careful 

theologians, with whom not a few later theologians agree, think 
that the matter of orders resides as much in the delivery of the in- 
struments" as in the imposition of hands. Prcelectiones (as 
abridged), vol. ii., p. 395. See, also, for Cranmer, Jenkyns, 
"Works of Cranmer," vol. i. pp. 32-36. 

1 See Jenkyns, ** Works," etc., vol. i. p. 73; iv. p. 147. 

2 Compare "Reformatio Legum," in 1552. 



74 The English Reformation. 

study. If such a method can be reconciled 
with the requirements of ordinarily fair deal- 
ing, then no man's real opinions can ever be 
ascertained. 

Again, we are told, and told truly, that in 
the ** Institution of a Christian Man," put forth 
in 1537 (while there is more or less confusion 
of statement, arising probably from the med- 
iaeval theory of orders), the orders of bishops 
and priests are, on the whole, spoken of as 
identical; and on this fact is grounded the 
further assertion that this is the synodical rul- 
ing of the Church of England. When, how- 
ever, we remember that the '* Institution" was 
never submitted to Convocation, but was the 
work of a commission appointed by the crown, 
consisting of *'all the bishops, eight arch- 
deacons and seventeen other doctors of di- 
vinity," and printed by royal authority; and 
when we remember, further, that the Ordinal, 
which was synodically sanctioned by Convoca- 
tion in 1552, contains the distinct declaration 
that there is a difference of order between 
bishops and priests, it is not difficult to see 



The English Reformation, 75 

where the truth lies and how the error has 
arisen.* 

These instances, it seems to me, illustrate, 
better than pages of mere abstract reasoning, 
the danger of resorting to other sources of in- 
formation than those which have been indi- 
cated; and justify the position which was as- 
sumed in indicating them. 

But, it may be said, does not all this admit 
the existence of variations and inconsistencies 
in doctrine, to speak of nothing more, which 
must seriously damage, if it does not utterly 
imperil, the claim of the Church of England 
to be an Ecclesia docens^ a teaching Church t 
The obvious answer to this question is, that, 
existing corruptions being asserted, and it being 
further alleged that those corruptions came in 
by gradual and varying accretions: it must of 
necessity follow (until it is shewn that such 
corruptions did not exist, and did not come 
into existence in the way alleged), that the 

3 See J. H. Blunt's *' Reformation," etc., p. 444, f.; Bp. 
Lloyd's "Formularies," pp. 101-123; Hardwick, *'History of 
the Articles," pp. 108-113. 



*j^ The English Reformation, 

variations of their gradual removal cannot 
be in any degree as damaging to the char- 
acter of a Church as the variations of their 
gradual accretion. And what other varia- 
tions, let me ask, than those which necessa- 
rily inhere in such gradual removal of grad- 
ually compacted errors, are chargeable on the 
Church of England ? Has she, like other 
bodies, which I will not here name, ever 
added to or taken from the great historic 
creeds of Christendom ? Has she ever laid a 
finger on the divine constitution of the Church 
in the three Orders of the Ministry and the 
equal and undivided Episcopate ? Has she 
ever violated that law of worship which re- 
quires it to be rendered to the Three Persons 
of the Adorable Trinity and forbids it to be 
given to any others? And is not a Church 
as much an Ecclcsia docc7is when she is teach- 
ing and propounding the one Faith ''whole 
and undefiled," as if she were giving utterance 
to all new-fangledness and teaching the latest 
discoveries in religion ? Is not '' the teaching 
of great Christian writers fifteen hundred years 



The English Reformation. yy 

ago as much part of the living voice of the 
Church as anything spoken in our day?"* 
Away with such puerilities ! If these charges 
are to be pressed against our Reformed Church, 
they will recoil with tenfold force and crush- 
ing weight upon those who make them.^ 

If now I have been able to present to you 
a reasonable classification of the matters which, 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, de- 
manded reform in the Church of England; to 
point out the lines which any practical reform 
must take and the agencies which, from the 
necessity of the case and the universally ac- 
cepted theory of* the time as to the relations 
of the temporal and the spiritual powers, must 
be concerned in it; to lay before you the va- 
rious elements that entered into the complex 
work and their accompanying dangers; to set 
forth the great guiding law under which the 
work was carried on, a law steadfastly adhered 
to by us but abandoned by the Roman Church; 
to shew whither we are to go, and whither we 

4 Dr. Littledale's "Plain Reasons," etc., p. i6. 

5 Palmer "Treatise on the Church," etc., part ii. c. vii. 



78 The E^iglish Reformation. 

are not to go, for authoritative and correct in- 
formation as to what our Reformation effected; 
and, in any degree, to vindicate our Reformed 
Church from the reproach of damaging and 
even destructive variations in doctrine, disci- 
pline and worship; then, my purpose in the 
present lecture is accomplished. 



LECTURE III. 

Abolition of Papal Jurisdiction in 
England. 



LECTURE III. 

ABOLITION OF PAPAL JURISDICTION IN 
ENGLAND. 

TN approaching the subject of my present 
lecture, I must ask you to bear in mind 
that we are not entering on the entire ques- 
tion of the papacy, but only on its relations 
to the Church and Realm of England. His- 
toric facts and ecclesiastical law and precedent 
must, therefore, be the two factors in our ar- 
gument. Those expositions of Holy Scripture 
which stand foremost in the discussion of the 
papal supremacy as such, evidently have no 
place here. Those wider views of conciliar 
enactment and ecclesiastical administration 
which go with such expositions are, for the 
present, put to one side. 

No doubt that wider view, that great- 
er question, should never be forgotten. No 
doubt, if the papacy is *' anything less than it 



82 The English Reformation. 

has asserted itself to be, if it is not in every- 
thing the divine ordinance of our blessed 
Lord and Saviour, it is false, a fiction and 
an imposture."^ No doubt, if law and pre- 
scription shew that it has no claim over the 
Church and Realm of England, that fact must 
tell strongly against its higher claim, and take 
an important place in the wider argument. 
But it is the former, not the latter, that we 
are concerned with now. 

I suppose there are multitudes of persons 
who, were they asked to state their ideas 
of the English Reformation, would say, that 
Henry VIII., enraged at Clement VII. because 
that Pontiff would not grant him a divorce 
from his queen, Katharine of Aragon, trans- 
ferred to himself the power of the Pope in 
England, and, with the help of his parlia- 
ment, set up a new church of his own. As- 
suredly this is *'a short and easy method" 
of disposing of the English Reformation and 
of our Reformed Church; and, therefore, ac- 
ceptable to those who value brevity and ease 

« Hussey, "Rise of the Papal Power," p. 209. 



The English Reformation, 83 

more than truth and accuracy; and accepta- 
ble also to those who, on the one side and 
the other, desire to make out a case against 
us. 

It cannot be necessary that I should enter 
here on any formal line of argument to dis- 
prove this preposterous view. It would be an 
insult to your intelligence should I attempt 
it. Some mistakes and irrelevancies are, how- 
ever, brought out in it which ought not to 
be passed by in silence. Let me speak of 
these by way of preface to the special sub- 
ject of my present lecture. 

First, then, we have here a striking instance 
of the fallacy of mistaking occasions for causes 
which was touched upon in a previous lecture. 
The complications connected with the King's 
marriage to Katharine of Aragon gave the 
occasion for action touching the Papal Su- 
premacy, the causes of which are to be sought 
for elsewhere. Those causes were various. 
Some of them have already been mentioned, 
others will be considered in due time. They 
had also been long at work; though their 



$4 The English Reformation. 

operation had been checked and thwarted 
by many things, especially by the protracted 
and long doubtful struggle between the sov- 
ereign and the barons, which may be said 
to have terminated with the ending of the 
wars of the roses and the accession of Henry 
VII. Cardinal Manning says, most truly, in 
a work written before he abandoned the Church 
of England: ^^ If any man will look down along 
the line of early English history, he will see 
a standing contest between the rulers of this 
land and the Bishops of Rome. The Crown 
and Church of England with a steady oppo- 
sition, resisted the entrance and encroach- 
ment of the secularized ecclesiastical power 
of the Pope in England. The last rejection 
of it was no more than a successful effort, 
after many a failure in struggles of the like 
kind."^ 

During the reign of Henry VII. no occasion 
presented itself specially calculated to bring 
the two forces indicated into collision. Nor 
was there such occasion offered in the earlier 

7 "Unity of the Church," p. 36, Am. Ed. 



The English Reformation. 85 

part of the reign of his successor. There are 
indeed mutterings heard from time to time, 
during the administration of Wolsey, whose 
**well known nationalism" could never have 
been acceptable at Rome. Complaints come 
from the papal court in 1516 that ''the tenth" 
has been refused to the Pope; that indulgences 
cannot be sold in England except under con- 
ditions altogether distasteful to the Curia; and, 
in 1518, the Pope complains that he hears 
so little from England. On the other hand 
the Pope does hear from England, in 15 18, 
that on a state occasion, at court, ''little re- 
spect was shown to the See Apostolic"; and, 
in 1525, we learn that Wolsey wrote "sharp 
though affectionate letters" to the Pope, and 
the hope is expressed that " His Holiness 
hath taken this sour sauce, sweetly powdered, 
to his edification." ^ All these things point 
in one direction; but they must have come 
to nothing, because Wolsey was all the time 
acting as legate and representative of the 
Pope, and could not, therefore, touch that 
s J. H. Blunt*s *' History," etc. p. 240. See also p. 54. 



86 The English Reformation. 

which was the fountain and origin of so many 
evils, especially of those which affected the 
constitution of the Church, namely '' the sec- 
ularized ecclesiastical power of the Pope." 

The question as to the lawfulness of the 
King's marriage simply brought already exist- 
ing anti-papal influences and tendencies to a 
focus; and gave the occasion for turning in- 
effective or partially effective objections and 
protests into effective action. But this was 
all it did. It was not, in any proper sense 
of the term, the cause of the Reformation. 

Nor does the character of such an occasion 
determine, or even affect, the character of a 
movement to which it furnishes the oppor- 
tunity for action. If reasonable and sufficient 
causes for the movement exist, if it is directed 
by those causes and controlled by great and 
true principles and laws, then its character 
is to be judged by those causes, principles 
and laws, and not by a mere incident in its 
progress. We note the incident, indeed, but 
then wc leave it. It may be very paltry or 
even vile; its paltriness or vileness leaves no 



The English Reformation, 87 

stain on the movement into the real life of 
which it does not enter, and with which it 
has no necessary or inherent connection. Let 
the question, then, as to the King's marriage 
be as paltry or vile as one pleases, let there 
be involved in it what you will of ^^inordi- 
nate and sinful affections " on his part, and 
of infinite servility and cringing on the part 
of those who acted with him, these are not 
the things by which we estimate, or ought 
to estimate, the character of the English Ref- 
ormation. That character must be determined 
simply by the necessities which led to it, 
and the way in which those necessities were 
met. 

It ought not, however, to be forgotten, that 
the two great underlying questions in this 
matter were neither paltry nor vile. It is 
customary to speak of Henry's demand for a 
divorce from his queen. But the real point 
at issue was, not whether there should be a 
divorce of parties joined in an undoubtedly 
lawful marriage, but whether the marriage 
itself was not unlawful and therefore ipso 



88 The English Reformation, 

facto null and void. Henry had been mar- 
ried, as we all know, to his brother Arthur's 
widow under a dispensation from Julius 11. 
The question, then, as to the lawfulness of 
the marriage, clearly brought up two other 
questions, on the answers to which the main 
answer must depend; first. Is marriage with 
a brother's widow forbidden by the law of 
God ? and secondly. If it is forbidden, can 
the Pope dispense with a law of God ? I only 
state the questions. But it is obvious at a 
glance that if the first is answered in the 
affirmative, then a similar answer to the sec- 
ond involves consequences that are simply 
appalling. 

Nor was the question a mere afterthought. 
It had been agitated at the time of the be- 
trothal, and Warham, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, strongly opposed any application for 
a dispensation from Rome. There were also, 
even then, **murmurings of the people" against 
the match. Later on, the King's anxieties, and 
possibly superstitious fears, were awakened by 
the failure of any male issue and the sole 



The English Reformation, 89 

survivorship of the Princess Mary; and the 
realm was disturbed by the dread of a dis- 
puted succession to the crown, a dread in- 
tensified by the remembrances of the wars 
of the roses. Nor may it be forgotten that 
in 1527 when ^* negotiations were in progress 
with reference to a contemplated marriage 
between the Princess Mary and one of the 
two sons of the king of France," the French 
envoy — then a bishop and afterwards a car- 
dinal — ** raised an objection against it that 
the Pope had exceeded his powers in grant- 
ing a dispensation for the marriage of Henry 
to Katharine, for that such a union was for- 
bidden by the law of God, not by the law 
of the Church only; and that, therefore, the 
marriage was not in fact valid, nor the Prin- 
cess Mary a lawful daughter of the King."^ 

9 J. H. Blunt's "History," etc., pp. 103, 114. Froude's 
"Hist, of England," vol. i. pp. 114-117. It is safe to say- 
that but for Katharine's dower and the avarice of Henry VII. 
there would never have been a thought of the marriage. Canon 
Perry ("Hist, of the English Church," p. 42), asserts that during 
the negotiations of 1527 Mary's legitimacy was not questioned. 
On the other hand, Le Grand, the French historiaii of the di- 



90 The English Reformatio7i, 

All this shews that there were matters of 
the most serious import connected with the 
marriage and its dissolution which ought not 
to be set aside as paltry or vile; while, at the 
same time, it must be freely admitted, that, 
at last, the most sinful desires actuated the 
King, and that he, and those who acted with 
him, adopted methods which can only be con- 
demned. These are undoubtedly great blots 
on the character of many persons more or less 
connected with the Reformation, but they have 
nothing to do with the character of that move- 
ment in itself considered.^*^ 



vorce, who had the French ambassador'^ s papers as authority, 
asserts the contrary. This would seem to be conclusive. It 
would not, however, be right to say as Mr. Froude seems to 
(vol. i. p. 114, n. I), that this occasioned the earliest intimation 
of a desire on the King's part for a divorce. The idea had been 
entertained as early as 1525 (Perry, p. 41, n. 2), and there is 
quite sufficient evidence that Wolsey had wrought upon Henry, 
either directly or by the agency of his confessor. Perry, p. 
42, n. 2. 

*<^ Nothing is said touching the action of Clement VII. because 
the history of the divorce is not under consideration. I may, 
however, say in a foot-note, that there is some reason to believe 



The English Reformation, 91 

Indeed it may be said, once for all, that 
nothing is to be more deprecated than the 
fashion of encumbering historical researches, 
and at the same time making their results 
unreal and unreliable, by the introduction into 
them of questions touching individual char- 
acter and personal motives. That good men 
may, under the influence of mistakes to which 
human weakness is always liable, espouse a 
bad cause, does not make that bad cause 
good. That bad men may, under the influ- 
ence of evil purposes which it may be made 

that the Pope *'was actually induced to pronounce the marriage 
with Katharine invalid (July 23, 1528); though his dread of the 
Emperor soon afterwards constrained him to repudiate the bull; ** 
and that he did, if documents may be relied on, say to the Bishop 
of Tarbes, that he wished the King would marry again ** either 
by dispensation of the English Legate, or otherwise, so it was not 
by his authority, thus diminishing his power as to dispensa- 
tions," etc.; and did also, in 1530, offer a dispensation for Henry 
to have two wives. The truth is that Clement's great point all 
along was to guard, not the purity of marriage, but the papal 
power; and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of Charles V. 
or Francis I. as the case might be. See Hard wick's ** Reforma- 
tion," p. 186, n. i; Froude's "History of England," vol. i. p, 
244, n. i; p. 375» n. 2. 



92 The English Reformation, 

to serve, espouse a good cause, cannot make 
that good cause bad. Sol non inqtiinaticr a 
re turpi. Ananias, Sapphira and Simon Ma- 
gus did not make the Apostolic Church an evil 
thing. The shortcomings and sins of individ- 
ual Christians do not change the character of 
Christianity. And if the vileness and infamies 
of Alexander VI., Julius II. and Leo X. are not 
to weigh against the claims of the Roman 
Church, why should more of weight be given 
to the alleged ill characters of some of the 
actors in our English Reformation } Let strict 
historic justice be done to each and every in- 
dividual; let each receive his own due meed 
of praise, or bear his own due burden of re- 
proach. But let not such praise or reproach 
be transferred from individuals to the systems 
with which they happen to be connected, ex- 
cept in so far as their characters are the direct 
results and embodiments of the principles and. 
doctrines which those systems have inculcated. 
Above all let not our Reformed Church be held 
responsible for characters which she did not 
shape, but which are the outcome of a train- 



The English Reformation, 93 

ing and instruction widely different from her 
own/ 

Meantime we may take comfort in believing 
that obscurations of historic truth which are 
caused by exaggerated views of individual 
character, are likely to be transitory and even 
ephemeral. It has been well said by one who 
had a right to say it, **The libellous Foxes and 
Sanderses, on either side, of the time itself, 
have been discredited long ago. And the 
equally perverse crotchetiness of some modern 
partisans — whether it be the love of clever par- 
adox which whitewashes Henry VIII. and vili- 

1 As an instance of the way in which just weights and measures 
fail to be dealt alike to all, it may be remembered that while, 
in some quarters, any conceivable amount of obloquy has been 
poured on Cranmer for his marriage, no notice has been taken of 
the fact, that unless Wolsey and Campeggio were married they 
must have lived in concubinage; for the former had a son and 
a daughter, and a son of the latter was knighted by Henry VIII. 
See J. H. Blunt's "History," etc., p. 97, n. 4. Still it must be 
remembered that after compulsory celibacy became the law for 
the clergy, "lawful marriage was often concealed under the veil 
of concubinage, the less disreputable alternative according to the 
ecclesiastical public opinion of the age." Pryce, "Ancient 
British Church," p. 205. 



94 The English Reformation, 

fies the Church, or the equally perverse ex- 
travagance which in the opposite direction 
delights to blacken Cranmer — are mere eccen- 
tricities that will make no mark."^ 

I turn from these topics which have en- 
grossed more time and space than I intended, 
but which must have been considered some- 
where, to the special subject of this lecture, 
the abrogation of the Papal Jurisdiction in 
England. In the classification of the neces- 
sary lines of reformation, constitutional, ritual 
and doctrinal, this reform stands first. And 
as it stands first, and everywhere presents 
itself, so it also lies at the root of all else; 
for no other reforms could have been success- 
fully attempted till this wrong had been dealt 
with. Wolsey's failure, for in spite of any 
partial results it was a failure, abundantly 
proves this. 

On what law then of the Catholic Church, on 
what venerable prescription carrying a power 
as potent as canon or enactment, on what con- 
sent of the realm of England given by the ec- 

s Haddan, ** Remains," p. 369. 



The English Reformation, 95 

clesiastical and secular powers, did the papal 
jurisdiction in England rest; so rest, that 
it might not be disturbed without violating 
compacts in the State and causing a schism 
in the Church ? These are the questions that 
meet us when we face that '* mysterious shape 
of sovereignty" which holds in one hand the 
sword of secular power, and in the other 
the rod of spiritual dominion. The answer 
to them opens before us a range of time 
and events of which I can only touch the 
salient points in attempting to gather up its 
testimony. 

It is not till the fifth century that the Brit- 
ish Church fairly appears as the Church of the 
nation. There was, no doubt, a Church in 
Britain before that period; but it was ** scanty 
in numbers and poor in wealth," and it ** ap- 
pears in history as simply following the lead 
of the Western Church in general, and spe- 
cially of the Gallic." Nor is it identified with 
the nation till *'a short time before the Saxon 
invasion."^ Amid all the uncertain legends and 

3 Haddan's "Remains," pp. 232, 235. 



96 The Efiglish Reformation, 

traditions of its earlier days, and all the his- 
tory of its later period, one fact stands prom- 
inently out. Its testimony is negative rather 
than positive, but under the circumstances 
the more valuable for that very reason. The 
Church of Britain was simply ignorant not 
merely of any supremacy of the Pope as of 
divine right, but of any claim on his part as 
Patriarch of the West.* There was not even 
that deferential affection which a national 
Church gives back to another to which it 
owes its origin. Any such feeling is directed 
toward the Gallic Church. There is no re- 
corded opposition, because there was nothing 
to oppose. There was no protest, because 
there was nothing to protest against. 

Roman writers are wont to make much of 
two things claimed for this period; first the 

< The Roman patriarchate included the ten provinces placed 
civilly under the Vi cart us urbis, namely, Italy, south of the Italic 
Diocese, and the three adjacent islands. Bingham, B. ix. c. i. 
Sec. 9. ff. ; Palmer, *'Origines Liturg," vol. ii. p. 260. ff. ; Bright's 
"Early English Church History," p. 62, n. 2; Fulwood, ^^Roma 
Ruit;' c. iv. 



The English Reformation, 97 

story of Lucius, a British King, and Eleuth- 
erus, Bishop of Rome in the latter part of 
the second century; and secondly, the pres- 
ence of British bishops at the Council of Sar- 
dica, in 347. 

The story about Lucius is, in brief, this. 
He, being King of Britain, or at least a Brit- 
ish king, sent to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome, 
(a. D. 174-186?), asking that he might *'by his 
commission be made a Christian;" and, that 
missionaries were thereupon sent to Britain, 
whose mission ended in the conversion of the 
British nation, and brought its Church under 
the papal rule. 

The germ of this tale first appears in the 
Catalogus PontificMin^ in what may be called 
its second edition, which comes down to 527. 
It merely mentions a letter from Lucius; this 
being the first notice of it after more than three 
centuries from its asserted date. As time went 
on the story was variously enlarged, and 
^adorned with circumstances. Bede took it 
from the Catalogus and introduced it into 
England. Then, more than three hundred 



98 The English Reformation. 

years after Bede's death, a letter from El- 
eutherus to Lucius appears **of all the odd 
places in the world, in a sort of appendix to 
the Laws of Edward the Confessor." Were 
this letter genuine it would make strongly 
against the legend. For in it Lucius is 
mentioned as demanding not the Christian 
religion, but the Roman civil law; and the 
Pope refers him to the Scriptures as the place 
where he can find sufficing laws, and that on 
the ground that Lucius is ** God's sole vice- 
gerent" and ** vicar" in his own kingdom. But 
the letter is only a clumsy forgery, — unless in- 
deed Eleutherus was endowed with so won- 
derful a prophetic gift as to be able to quote 
prophetically a- work not extant in his day. 
For ** the translations of Holy Scripture 
found in the letter are translations made by 
Jerome, who did not exist till nearly two 
centuries after the Pope who is said to have 
written the letter." We may safely dismiss 
the story with the caustic remark of an old 
writer, that it resembles the dry and mouldly 
bread of the Gibeonites which was baked 



The English Reformation, 99 

in ovens nearer home than the Israelites 
imagined.® 

It is also claimed that British bishops hav- 
ing been present at the Council of Sardica, 
in 347, and having joined in enacting its can- 
ons, the British Church was thereby brought 
under the appellate jurisdiction of the Bishop 
of Rome. *^In the third canon" of that coun- 
cil *'it is said, that *if any bishop thought he 
had good reason' to appeal from a provincial 
judgment of his case, and to desire a new 
trial, he should write to Julius, Bishop of 
Rome;" and the Bishop of Rome, if he thought 
fit, might name new judges, or he might order 
the case to be tried again by the provincial 
bishops, or send presbyters from his side {oiitd 
Tov idiov nXevpovy legates), to try it.^ 

Now without questioning the presence of 

5 Haddan's "Remains," p. 227; Bright's "Early Eng. Ch.," 
p. 3; Bennett, "Church's Broken Unity," Romanism, i. p. 17. ff. 
The latest version of the story which I have seen is in the Abbe 
Darras' ''Hist. Gen. de P Eglise,'" vol. i. p. 137. He tells the 
tale as calmly as if it were indubitably true. 

« Hussey, "Rise of the Papal Power," p. 4. 



lOO The English Reformation, 

British bishops'^ or the genuineness of the 
canons, or pressing the point, urged by Galli- 
can divines, that this appellate power was 
given only personally to Julius, and did not 
pass to his successors, there are still several 
things to be carefully noted. 

It is obvious, to begin with, that new pow- 
ers are conferred by the canons instead of 
ancient or existing ones being recognized.® 
There is no reference as at Nice to the *' an- 
cient customs," or at Constantinople to pre- 
vious canons, or at Ephesus to the Canons 
of the holy Fathers. The legislation does 

7 It is doubtful if they were present, or had any other con- 
nection with the Council than to accept its vindication of Ath- 
anasius. The letter of the Council makes no mention of 
Britain. 

^ De Marca says, "The words of the Canon prove that the in- 
stitution of this right was new. If it please you, says Hosius 
Bishop of Cordova, who presided over the Council, let us honor 
the memory of the Apostle Peter. He says not that the ancient 
tradition was to be confirmed, as was wont to be done in mat- 
ters which only require the renewal or explanation of an ancient 
right." Quoted by Allies, ** Church of England cleared from the 
Sin of Schism," p. 76. See also Innet's ** Origities Anglicance^ 
pp. 182-186. 



The English Reformation, loi 

not recognize an existing power, it creates 
a new one. Its testimony therefore is fatal 
to any prescriptive jurisdiction of the Bishop 
of Rome. 

But what is the power created } One which 
depended entirely on the action of others, and 
gave the Bishop of Rome no authority to orig- 
inate action for himself. If a bishop consid- 
ered himself wronged by his comprovincials 
he might appeal to Rome, but the Roman 
bishop had no permission to act till his ac- 
tion was invoked, and there was not given 
him authority ^*to evoke causes to Rome, 
nor to summon bishops ex-officioy nor to pro- 
ceed to review and set aside the judgments 
of Councils."^ Nor was appeal allowed in any 
and all cases, but only in one, ** namely, when 
a bishop was deposed by his comprovincials. ''^^ 
All this confers no patriarchal power, and 
brings no church which was not a part of 
the Roman patriarchate — as the British Church 
assuredly was not — under the patriarchal ju- 

9 Hussey, p. 5. 

JO Hefele, «' Hist, of Church Councils," vol. ii. p. 125. 



102 The English Reformation, 

risdiction of the Bishop of Rome. There is, 
in point of fact, no record of any appeal to 
Rome in the history of the British Church. 
The first instance of it is found in Wilfred's 
first appeal in 678. 

Moreover, the Council of Sardica is only a 
provincial council at the utmost, and its de- 
crees are therefore open to review and re^ 
versal by a General Council. Such review 
and reversal were made by the second Gen- 
eral Council, that of Constantinople in 381, 
which orders that **in each ecclesiastical prov- 
ince the Provincial Synod shall govern,"^ by 
which provision, as even Hefele admits, ** the 
appeal to Rome was excluded." ^ 

There is, then, no evidence that the Pa- 
pacy acquired any jurisdiction over the Brit- 
ish Church either by the conversion of the 



» Canon II. Compare also Can. XIX. of Chalcedon. 

2 << History of Church Councils," vol. ii. 356. On the whole 
subject, see Husscy, ut sup., pp. 1-12; Ilefele, vol. ii. pp. 
1 12-129; Fulwood, c. xix., § xi.; Bramhall, ** Works," Fol. 
1677, p. 267; Guettde, **The Papacy," Am. Ed. pp. 124-128; 
Prycc, ''Ancient British Church," pp. 97-99. 



TJie English Reformation, 103 

nation or by ecclesiastical enactment; while 
the circumstances of Augustine's interviews 
with the British bishops not only shew that 
no such jurisdiction had been acquired by 
prescription, by unwritten usage and accepted 
act, but also that there had been no connec- 
tion of any sort with the See of Rome. 

I have dwelt the longer on this matter for 
a reason which will presently appear in con- 
nection with the question, often asked, grant- 
ing all that has been said, did not the Bishop 
of Rome acquire jurisdiction in England by 
the m.ission of Augustine, in 597, and its re- 
sults ? The answer is perfectly plain on every 
principle of ecclesiastical law. There was a 
church in England when Augustine came 
thither. It had been in fact, it was then in 
right, the national Church of the land. Trod- 
den down it may have been by the heathen, 
pushed into the corners and by-places of the 
land, if you will into *'dens and caves of 
the earth,'' yet still the Church of Britain 
with its canonical rights and immunities, pro- 
tected in them by that great canon of the 



104 The English Reformation, 

Council of Ephesus, in 431, which covers with 
the shield of law our Anglican position, and 
stamps the papal claims on England as illegal 
and a usurpation. These are the words of 
the Canon: **None of the most religious bish- 
ops shall invade any other province, which 
has not heretofore from the beginning been 
under the hand of himself or his predeces- 
sors. But if any one has so invaded a prov- 
ince and brought it by force under himself, 
he shall restore it, that the canons of the 
Fathers may not be transgressed, nor the 
pride of secular dominion be privily intro- 
duced under the appearance of a sacred of- 
fice, nor we lose, little by little, the freedom 
which our Lord Jesus Christ, the deliverer 
of all men, has given us by His own blood." ^ 

3 Canon VIII. Each metropolitan was allowed ** to take a 
copy of the things transacted for his own security." The Canon, 
it will be observed, accords with Canons XIV. and XV. of the 
Council of Antioch, in 341, and not with that of Sardica in 347. 
Antioch was one of the five local councils, the canons of which, 
collected into one code, were accepted by the Council of Chal- 
cedon, and stamped with the authority of that, the fourth, Gen- 
eral Council. 



The English Reformation. 105 

On this canon, therefore, we take our stand. 
It justifies every resistance to the usurpations 
of the papacy from the action in the case of 
Wilfred in 678 to the final rejection of the pa- 
pacy in 1534. And more than this, it contains 
a prophetic foreshadowing of the way in which 
*^ little by little . . . the pride of secular domin- 
ion" was ** privily introduced under the appear- 
ance of a sacred office,'' and so national church- 
es lost the freedom which Christ had given 
them and became subject to papal bondage. 

It is, then, nothing to the purpose to say 
that Gregory I. wrote to Augustine* that he 
committed all the British bishops to his au- 
thority. This was just what he could not 
lawfully do, what the British bishops had an 
entire right under the Ephesine canon to re- 
sist, and what they did resist. Nor can we 
believe that Gregory, who had stigmatized the 
title of universal bishop, and the claims it car- 
ries with it, as ** proud, rash, foolish, wicked, 
blasphemous, and anti-Christian,"^ could have 

4 Ep. xi. 64. 

s Bright, "Early Eng. Church,'* p. 62, n. 3 and references. 



io6 The English Reformation, 

undertaken to act on the ground of the uni- 
versal jurisdiction of the Roman bishop. In 
all probability British bishops were scarcely 
in Gregory's thoughts at all. So entire had 
been the separation of the churches that to 
him they were little more than shadowy 
phantoms, to be disposed of as easily as 
might be. 

It may still be said, notwithstanding the 
Ephesine canon, was not some jurisdiction over 
England gained somehow through the con- 
version of England by Augustine } Some and 
somehow are rather vague terms, but a neg- 
ative general will, I suppose, cover them. 
Among all the romances of history there is 
scarcely one that is greater than the attribu- 
tion of the conversion of England to the labors 
of Augustine and his companions, or to the 
mission from Rome in any way. I content 
myself with simply quoting the well weighed 
and true words of Mr. Haddan: '' If Augustine 
is to be the Hengist of the Christian conquest, 
his merits must be reduced to the proportions 
assigned by later philosophical historians to 



The Eftglish Reformation, 107 

his secular prototype; and the Christianizing 
as the Teutonizing of the island beyond the 
narrow limits of Kent must be assigned to 
others." To these may be added the equally 
true words of Mr. Bennett: **For one hundred 
years or nearly so after the arrival of St. Au- 
gustine, not a single county north of the 
Thames, except perhaps Norfolk and Suffolk 
had received Christianity through the instru- 
mentality of Rome ; " all the rest of Eng- 
land was converted by the labors ** of the 
Irish Scots; a Church altogether repudiat- 
ing Roman interference, denying Roman ju- 
risdiction, and upholding an Apostolic suc- 
cession."® 

I do not for a moment mean to say that 
any conversion of a heathen people or any 
aid extended to an oppressed and suffering 
Church, or to an oppressed and suffering mi- 
nority in any Church striving to maintain or 
to recover the Catholic Faith or Order in the 
face of heresy at home or usurpation from 
abroad, can give the Church that converts 

6 Haddan, ut sup., pp. 316, 317. Bennett, ut sup., pp. 104, 105. 



io8 The English Reformation. 

or aids lawful jurisdiction over the nation it 
converts or the body it assists. In the one 
case, as appears over and over again in the 
early conversions of peoples and nations, a 
national and autonomous Church is founded. 
In the other, as is shewn by abundant illus- 
trations in the history of Arianism, no juris- 
diction is acquired from the outside, there is 
only reintegration and restoration within; in 
some instances, deliverance from an obtruded 
and really foreign episcopate. 

There being, therefore, no jurisdiction of 
Rome over England acquired by prescription 
of patriarchal right, by conversion of heathen 
peoples, or by aid, if there was any, afforded 
to the ancient national Church of the country; 
and such jurisdiction being made illegal and 
void (unless held from the beginning), by the 
Ephesine canon, it becomes a usurpation to 
be resisted and rejected. That such resistance 
was long in becoming rejection only shews 
how strong were the circumstances, — the force, 
or the fraud, — that were to be conquered. 
That rejection came at last, only proves that 



The English Reformation, 109 

in this, as in many other cases, right was slow 
in overcoming wrong. 

And yet there was continuous resistance. 
It is enough here to mention the case of 
Wilfred closed in 706, the laws of Edward 
the Confessor, the various quarrels with Rome 
touching exemptions from episcopal jurisdic- 
tion, the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164, 
the resistance to Otho the papal legate in 
1237, tl^^ parliamentary refusal of tribute 
in 1365, and the enactments against papal 
provisions in England by statutes of Edward 
L, Edward III., Richard II., and Henry V. 
I name these simply as instances illustrating 
and proving the statement already quoted 
**that the Crown and Church of England 
with a steady opposition, resisted the en- 
trance and encroachment of the secularized 
ecclesiastical power of the Pope in England.""^ 

We have reached, at last, the reign of Henry 

' See Bramhall's "Just Vindication of the Church of Eng- 
land," and his Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon; Hart's 
*«Eccl. Records," c. ii.; Stephens's "English Constitution," 
vol. i. pp. 178-207. 



no The English Reformation. 

VIII., and are to consider the steps by which 
the final rejection of the papal power was 
effected. In the earlier part of his reign, 
Henry was the devoted adherent of the Pa- 
pacy, and for his devotion, as exhibited in his 
work against Luther, received from Leo X., 
the title of ** Defender of the Faith." How 
thorough his devotion was appears from the 
testimony of Sir Thomas More. More had 
ventured to give the King his opinion that 
the Pope's authority had been pushed too far 
in the treatise against Luther, and had re- 
minded him of the statute of Richard II. The 
King replied, *' We and all Christians are so 
much bound to the See of Rome that we can- 
not do it too much honor Whatsoever 

impediment be to the contrary, we will set 
forth, for our parts, his authority to the ut- 
most as it deserved; for from that See we first 
received our faith and after our imperial crown 
and sceptre; which," More adds, *'till his grace 
with his own mouth told mc, I never heard of 
before." ^ But this devotion of the King was 
8 Wordsworth, ** Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. ii., p. 169. 



The English Reformation, iii 

by no means shared in by other powerful per- 
sons or by the body of the clergy and people. 
What More thought we have just seen. Wol- 
sey's administration was far from favorable to the 
papal power. As has been said before, there 
are complaints from Rome at hearing nothing 
from England; sharp letters go to the Pope; 
money payments are withheld; indulgences 
cannot be sold in the realm without royal li- 
cense; the tenth is refused; and altogether' the 
relations of Rome and England are greatly 
disturbed. ** The jurisdiction of the papal see 
over the Church ef England was already rot- 
ting away before Henry VIII. laid the axe to 
its roots; and it was its moral rottenness which 
made its destruction so comparatively easy." ^ 

No direct step was taken till more than a 
year after the avocation of the divorce case to 
Rome, an act which was nothing less than an 
** outrageous provocation offered to an inde- 
pendent sovereign " ^"^ and to the entire realm. 
Nor was that step a violent one. In Septem- 

9 Blunt, ** Reformation," p. 245. 

10 Ibid, p. 247. 



112 The English Reformation. 

ber, 1530, the King issued a proclamation, ex- 
pressed substantially in the words of the law 
of Richard II., forbidding the admission into 
the kingdom of bulls from Rome. Had 
Henry listened to More ten years earlier, he 
might have been saved the mortification of 
eating his own words. The proclamation, 
however, neither asserted nor claimed any new 
power. It simply brought into action an ex- 
isting law, passed in 1393; violations of which 
had been connived at, indeed, but had never 
been lawful. It looked back over a long past 
and also foreshadowed a rapidly approaching 
end. 

The next step, and it deserves careful con- 
sideration, was taken by Convocation in 1531, 
in a petition to the Crown.' This petition set 
forth the hardships and vexations which the 
bishops experienced in being compelled to 
pay, as the price of the bulls for consecration, 
*'the annates, that is to say, the first fruits 

* The original document is in the British Museum. Blunt 
gives It at length, "Reformation," p. 250, ff. See also Dixon's 
** History of the Church of England," etc. vol. i. p. 113, ff. 



The English Reformation, 113 

of their bishoprics." ^ It then asserts that the 
annates **as touching the temporalities be- 
longeth of right to the King's Grace, and as 
touching the spirituality to the Archbishop of 
Canterbury." It sets forth the temporal alle- 
giance of bishops to the Crown, and asks for 
the abolition of the exaction. The pith of the 
document is in its close, in which the King is 
requested, in case the Pope should **make any 
process for retaining these annates," or with- 
hold the bishops' bulls till they are paid, **to 
ordain, in this present parliament, that then 
the obedience of him and the people be with-- 
drawn from the See of Rome^' as the King of 
France had formerly withdrawn his obedience 
and that of his subjects from Benedict XIII. 

2 First fruits, were, in their beginning, a simoniacal contrivance 
by ^\^i:^ foreigners appointed by the Pope to benefices in Eng- 
land paid him the first year's rent of the benefice, under pretext 
of carrying on the wars for regaining the Holy Land. But at last 
they were extended to all persons appointed by the King or his 
temporal subjects. How great this burden had become, and how 
it drained the kingdom, may be seen from the estimate that, from 
i486, ;^45,ooo or $225,000 of our money had annually gone in 
this way. 



114 T^^^^ EiiglisJi Reformation. 

In accordance with this suggestion Parliament 
passed an act* ordaining that '*all payments 
of first fruits to the court of Rome should be 
put down and forever restrained." Unwilling, 
however, to go to extremities, it left the final 
ordering of the statute to the King, who put 
it in force by letters patent in 1533.* 

Following on this beginning came, in 1532-3, 
the prohibition of Appeals to Rome. I have al- 
ready spoken of this matter, as it was alleged 
to affect the early English Church, and shewn 
that appeals had no place in that Churches 
polity. Nor, indeed, did they become at all 

3 23 Hen. VIII. c. xxxiii. See Stephen's "Eng. Constitution,'* 
vol. i. p. 185. 

< Henry, instead of restoring the first fruits to the Church vested 
them in the Crown. So they continued till 1704, when, at the 
instance of Queen Anne and to carry out her generous offer of re- 
linquishing them, Parliament passed a bill vesting them in trustees 
for the augmentation of poorer livings. This trust is known as 
** Queen Anne's Hounty." Burnet, with his usual fussy and con- 
ceited self-complacency, takes the credit of the transaction to him- 
self. **The Queen was pleased to let it be known that the first 
motion of this matter came from Me.'' Palm, ** Hist, of Ch. of 
Eng.,*' etc. p. 253, ff. 



The English Reformation, 115 

an established usage till after the reign of 
Henry 11.^ There was no warrant for them 
in the ancient law of the Church, rather that 
law entirely condemned them; and they in- 
volved delays, exactions and abuses that were 
siniply intolerable. 

The preamble of the "Act for Restraining 
Appeals," is so remarkable, and so distinctly 
illustrates som.e of the grounds and principles 
of the English Reformation, that I shall ven- 
ture to give it nearly entire. 

** Whereas, by divers sundry old authentic 
histories and chronicles, it is manifestly de- 
clared and expressed that this realm of Eng- 
land is an empire^ and so hath been accepted 
in the world, governed by one supreme head 
and King, having the dignity and royal estate 
of the imperial crown of the same; unto whom 
a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees 
of people, divided in terms and by names of 
spiritualty and temporalty, be bound and 
ought to bear, next to God, a natural and 
humble obedience ; he being also institute 

5 Gibson's *' Codex," Tit. III. c. iii. n. g. 



Ii6 The English Reformation, 

and furnished .... with plenary .... power . . . 
to render and yield justice and final determina- 
tion to all mariner of folk ^ residents or subjects 
within this his realm; .... the body spiritual 
whereof having power when any cause of the 
law divine happened to come in question .... 
and the law temporal for trial of property of 
lands and goods, and for the conservation of 
the people of this realm in unity and peace . . . 
was and is yet administered .... by sundry 
judges and ministers of the other part of the 
body politic called the temporalty." After 
this striking preamble, the Act appeals to the 
ancient laws of the realm, recites some of the 
many grievances of appeals to Rome, abolishes 
such appeals, and provides that appeals shall 
lie from the archdeacon's court to the bishop's, 
and from the bishop's to the archbishop's, 
where final judgment shall be given.* 

6 In cases affecting the Crown the appeal lay to the Upper 
House of Convocation. 24 lien. VIII. c. 12, Gibson's ** Codex,** 
Title III. c. iii. "The Act for Submission of the Clergy" (25 
Hen. VIII. c. xbc), made no exception as to causes touching the 
Crown, but allowed, **for all mamier of causes,'* a final appeal 



The English Reformation, 117 

This enactment cut the tap-root of papal 
jurisdiction in England, nor, with the excep- 
tion of the brief reign of Mary, has that juris- 
diction ever been revived. 

I pass by here,^ merely mentioning it, the 
Act of 1533/ abolishing the papal power in 
the appointment of bishops (because its pro- 

to *<the King in Chancery,'' who, thereupon, appointed, under 
the great seal, a Court of Delegates to determine the appeal. 
Even after this, the King in Council could appoint a Commission 
of Review. This arrangement continued till the reign of William 
IV. Then, by Statute 2 and 3 of V^Hliam IV., the Court of Del- 
egates was abolished, and the King in Council was to exercise all 
the powers of that Court; and, also, by statute of 3 and 4 of Wil- 
liam rV., '* the Crown was empowered to remit the hearing of ec- 
clesiastical appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coim- 
cil, who were to report their opinion thereon to the King in 
Council." What is called Lord Penzance's Court has, as all 
know, come recently into existence, and its Judge is put in place 
of the old Official Principals of the Provincial Courts of the South- 
em and Northern Provinces. 

It is curious, and worth while, to compare the statements of 
Bishop Gibson, "Codex," Int. p. xxi, with those of Dr. Pusey, 
"Royal Supremacy," p. 202, and of Mr. Fremantle, "Eccl. 
Judg. of Privy Council," Introduction. They are condensed in 
Brooke's "Six Judgments," etc. Int. p. 38 f. 

7 25 Henry VHI. c. 20. 



Il8 The English Reformation, 

visions will be better treated of in connection 
with the Royal Supremacy), and proceed to 
those enactments by which spiritual jurisdic- 
tion was transferred from the Pope to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury. These acts were 
passed/ in 1533-4 and 1536, but as the last 
was only a sort of *' healing act" to cover the 
case of ecclesiastics who held office from Rome, 
the first alone is important in our present re- 
view. Its title is an ''Act Concerning Peter's 
Pence and Dispensations." Peter's Pence were 
a gift made on occasion of a visit to Rome 
about 793 by Offa, King of Mercia, for the 
maintenance of an English school at Rome 
*' for the instruction of illiterate Englishmen 
who should travel thither."^ Money payments 
to Rome are, however, apt to continue, what- 
ever may become of the purpose for which 
they are given. The payment went on till 

8 25 Henry VIII. c. 21; and 28 Henry VIII. c. 16; Gibsons' 
** Codex." Tit. iii. c. v. 

9 Canon Robertson, ** History of the Church," vol. iii. p. 181, 
dissents from this view. But see Dixon's ** Church of England,^' 
vol. 1. p. 186, first note. 



The English Reformation, 119 

by this Act it was swept away, arxd with it 
the last shred of papal exaction in England. 
The important part of the Act is found in 
its earlier portion, and in the three following 
provisions; that neither sovereign nor subjects 
shall sue to the Pope, or any of his deputies, 
for **any Instruments or Writings of what 
name, kind, nature or quality soever they be 
of," or for any cause; that all such Dispensa- 
tions, etc., *^ shall be henceforth granted to the 
sovereign and his subjects by the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, only that in case of Dispensa- 
tions" of a novel Jkind "a license from the 
King or Council shall be required; and that 
all such Dispensations, etc., shall be held good 
and valid." The Act further declared that it 
embodied ^^much the old ancient customs of 
this realm;" and, most important of all, that 
it should not be so *^ interpreted and expounded 
as if the King his nobles and subjects did in- 
tend by the same to decline or vary from the 
Congregation of Christ's Church in any things 
concerning the very articles of the Catholic 
Faith of Christendom, or in any other things 



I20 The English Reformation, 

declared by Holy Scripture and the Word of 
God."^^ 

With this solemn declaration the series of 
parliamentary enactments touching the usurped 
papal jurisdiction is concluded. Those portions 
of it which it had usurped from the civil power 
were restored to that power; those which it had 
taken to itself from the National Church were 
restored to the authorities of that Church; and 
whatever else there was came to an end. 

Side by side with the course of legislation 

10 We meet here the word Congregation. Later on Romanists 
made the use of this word the occasion of an attack on English 
Versions of the Scriptures. Field, "Of the Church," book i. c. 
v., at the end, thus meets the attack: **The reason why our 
translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to use the word 
Congregation than Churchy was not, as the adversary maliciously 
imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the Church; but 
because, as by the name of religion and religious men^ ordinarily 
in former times mer^ understood nothing but the professions of 
monks and friars; so all the ordinary sort, when they heard the 
name of the Church, understood nothing else thereby but either 
the material place where men met to worship God, or the clergy ^ 
jurisdictions and temporalities Ixilonging to them. . . . \Vlien this 
error in the conceit and apprehension of men was removed, the 
former name of Church was more ordinarily used again." 



The English Reformation, 121 

which has been briefly sketched, there appears 
a series of enactments, touching the Sovereign 
and the State in their connection with the 
Church, which I have purposely reserved for 
separate treatment; believing that by so do- 
ing the two topics, Papal Jurisdiction and Roy- 
al Supremacy, might be presented with greater 
distinctness. One thing, however, must be spo- 
ken of before I sum up the principles proclaimed 
and the results attained in these enactments. 

It could not but happen that, in the years 
during which these things were engrossing the 
attention of the ^* spiritualty and temporalty" 
of the realm, the theological question as to 
the spiritual power of the Pope in and over 
National Churches should come to the surface. 
It was simply unavoidable. The question did 
present itself, and the English Convocations 
of Canterbury and York met it by the defini- 
tive declaration (in 1534),^ *^that the Bishop of 
Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred 
on him by God, in this Kingdom of England, 

1 Canterbury declared on March 5, 1534, and York on May 5 
of the same year. 



122 The English Reformation. 

than any other foreign Bishop." That declara- 
tion, subscribed with wonderful unanimity by 
** bishops, chapters, monasteries, colleges, and 
hospitals," completed the work which Convo- 
cation had begun and which Convocation thus 
ended. The usurpation was over; and, though 
for a little while it might revive again, it was 
never more to find a home in England. 

And now what principles are apparent, what 
results are reached in these enactments — the 
detail of which has been but wearisome — of 
Parliament and Convocation } What light is 
thrown on the spirit, methods, purposes, of 
the English Reformation ? 

1. The vision of a National autonomous 
Church, holding the Faith, Orders, and Lit- 
urgy of the Universal Church, and subject 
only to a free and lawful General Council, 
which looms up, indistinctly but unmistak- 
ably, in the petition of Convocation in 1531, 
takes on shape and consistency as time ad- 
vances, till it stands out a living thing in 1534. 

2. There is not the smallest thought of sep- 
arating from the unity of tlic Catholic Church 



The English Reformation, 123 

of Christ, far less of founding a new Church. 
The law of historic continuity is all along 
asserted and acted on. 

3. There is no claim of new and before 
unheard of rights or privileges for Sovereign, 
Parliament, or Convocation. Nothing is cre- 
ative, everything is declaratory of rights and 
privileges once held, since usurped, now re- 
stored. And the appeal is constantly that 
of Nicaea to the ** ancient customs." 

4. The powers and duties of the spiritualty 
and temporalty are recognized if not defined, 
and their several -jurisdictions are asserted. 
No doubt the theory was also held — for all 
held it in those days — that spiritual power 
must have added to it the penal force of civil 
law, and be exercised **'in public courts after 
a coercive manner." But this does not touch, 
in principle, the distinction so plainly made. 

5. The Pope is acknowledged simply as a 
Bishop, **the Bishop of Rome, with the juris- 
diction defined by the ancient canons." 

6. There is no impassioned grasping after 
some vague idea, some unknown right, some 



124 ^^^^ English Reformation. 

half-developed theory. No single wrong, nor 
any single doctrine, is pushed into a promi- 
nence and pressed to an extent that destroys 
the balance of things, and brings in all those 
evils which result from distorted and dislo- 
cated truths. 

7. By careful steps and constitutional meth- 
ods, repellant to those who delight in sur- 
prises and effects, situations and displays, but 
welcomed by all who desire well compacted 
and well adjusted results, the work goes on. 
The coat was not torn in pieces in hastily 
stripping off objectionable fringes. 

Surely these are things to be thankful for. 
And I hold it to be a most noteworthy and 
significant feature of this whole dealing with 
the papal usurpation, that it was begun and 
concluded by the Clergy of England and not 
by the King or the Parliament.* 

2 Mr. Blunt has left little for others to do with this subject but 
to follow in his footsteps and often to use his words. This I have 
freely done; always however verify in j^ — as it turned out need- 
lessly — any references which were made. 



LECTURE IV. 
Royal Supremacy 



LECTURE IV. 

ROYAL SUPREMACY. 

TNTIMATELY connected with the action of 
the Convocation and Parliament of England 
touching the Papal Jurisdiction, were the en- 
actments concerning the relations of the Crown 
to the Church, called, — by a not very felicitous 
choice of terms, — the Royal Supremacy. This 
is the topic which now claims our attention. 

There is, I suppose, in the minds of many 
people, a vague notion that at the period of 
the Reformation the State, as one party, and 
the Church of England, as another party, en- 
tered into some contract or concordat under 
which, by some special Act of Parliament, the 
latter became the Church by law established. 

Nothing can be further from the truth. 
"The Church of England could not have 
been established by Act of Parliament, for 



128 The English Reformation, 

she existed as the estabHshed Church of the 
Country hundreds of years before Parliament 
came into being. The phrase ''by law estab- 
lished' is misleading when applied to the 
Church in the sense of her having been created 
or constituted by any human law whatsoever, 
whether promulgated by kingly decree or 
enacted by Act of Parliament. In no such 
sense, in any Church or State document where 
it appears, is it so used, or so intended to be 
understood. When the Church of England is 
spoken of as * by law established,* nothing 
more is to be understood," because nothing more 
is meant, **than that her Constitution, Doc- 
trine, Liturgy and various offices having been 
drawn up and agreed to by her representatives, 
received the sanction of the State, and that 
the observance of them is enforceable by law 
on those who are her ministers or members; 
further that she is protected in the enjoyment 
of her rights, privileges and endowments" — as 
what religious body or civil corporation is not ? 
— *' by the law of the land; and that hers is the 
recognized ecclesiastical organization and form 



The English Reformation. 129 

of worship through which the heads of the State 
perform all public religious acts."' The State 
never gave the Church its organization nor 
ordered its government. It would be far more 
correct to say that the Church in England 
shaped the State. Indeed the latest historian 
of the English people does say, that the synods 
of the Church *^ led the way by their example 
to national parliaments; the canons which these 
synods enacted led the way to a national sys- 
tem of law."* The State, then, never estab- 
lished the Church by any statute or act. The 
National Church grew up with the national 
life, side by side with the civil polity of the 
nation. 

The State never endowed the Church of Eng- 
land as a body. Cathedral churches and bish- 
ops' sees were endowed by individual gifts 
to individual sees and cathedrals, gifts fre- 
quently bestowed by kings and princes. Parish 
churches, chapels, chantries and even monas- 
teries were endowed in the same way, and 

3 "Englishman's Brief," p. 13. 

4 Green, "Hist, of the Eng. People," vol. i. p. 59. Am. Ed. 



130 The English Reformation. 

**the Norman conquest found the whole land 
provided with churches," and subdivided into 
parishes. None of those endowments depended 
on Acts of Parliament: and while monastic 
endowments had documentary evidence to 
offer, parochial endowments rested on custom 
and prescription. ** Domesday Book furnishes 
direct and unimpeachable testimony on this 
head."^ And what is true of these endow- 
ments is also true of what are known as tithes. 
Parliament never created these. It recognizes 
their existence in its legislation; it supervises 
and regulates them; it solves, or undertakes 
to solve, difficulties connected with them; but 
it did not create them. It could not. For 
whether we regard tithes as dating from the 
sixth century or from the eighth, ** they were 
payable and were paid to the Church," as a 

6 "Brief," pp. 30-33. It is often supposed that nearly all the 
endowments of the Church of England ante-date the Reformation. 
This is a great mistake. The income from endowments, etc., 
given since the Reformation exceeds that from ante- Reformation 
endowments, by about £TpQ,ooo. See Cutt's ** Turning Points 
m Eng. Ch. History," p. 318. This estimate is as late as 1872. 



The English Reformation, 131 

voluntary rent charge on the land, ** long be- 
fore Parliament existed, or before anything 
answering to its constitution was even in 
embryonic being. The payment of tithes is 
of more ancient date than the Crown of Eng- 
land, the Constitution of England, or the Par- 
liament of England." ^ By no Statute of 
Parliament, then, was the Church of England 
established or endowed. 

While, however, the testimony of history 
puts all this beyond the possibility of doubt, 
it is equally true that from very early times 
the English sovereigns had close connections 
with and intimate relations to the Church. I 
do not mean to say that from the days of 
the barbarian conversions, and even from the 
time of Constantine this was not the case 
throughout Christendom. I only assert it, spe- 
cifically, of England. And it may be added, 
that two things contributed to make these 
connections and relations especially close and 
intimate. The first was the mode in which 

6 "Brief," pp. 33-48; Green, <'Hist. of Eng. People,'' vol. 
i. p. 59. 



132 The English Reformation, 

the English people were converted to the 
Faith, by the conversion of the Sovereign first 
and of his subjects afterwards. The second 
was the intensely national character of the 
English Church, which has been already spoken 
of It is easy to see how these two things 
would work together in bringing about the 
closest relations between Church and Sover- 
eign. The former might operate more directly, 
but the latter would work not less powerfully; 
due as it was to **that insular position, that 
remoteness from the centre of ecclesiastical 
power, that independent character of its in- 
habitants, that comparative freedom of its 
institutions, which gave to national life in 
England, both civil and ecclesiastical, a com- 
plexion of its own."^ 

I need only cite one of the laws of Edward 
the Confessor to shew you how the relations 
of the King of England and the Church of 
England were regarded in the last half of the 
eleventh century, and before the Norman con- 
quest. **The King, who is the Vicar of the 

7 Canon Perry, *' History'* etc., p. I. 



The English Reformation, 133 

Supreme King, is appointed to this end, that 
lie may rule and defend the kingdom and peo- 
ple of the Lord, and before all the Holy Church, 
from such as would harm them; and that he 
may destroy and root out evil doers/' The 
principle embodied in this enactment was rec- 
ognized, about a century later, in the Consti- 
tutions of Clarendon, in which it was enacted 
that appeals should go from the archdeacon 
to the bishop, from the bishop to the arch- 
bishop, **and if the archbishop failed in min- 
istering justice, resort was to be had finally 
to the lord King, that by his precept the con- 
troversy might terminate in the archbishop's 
court; so that it should go no further without 
the royal consent." 

I do not mean to say that either the laws 
of Edward the Confessor or the Constitutions 
of Clarendon created the relations which they 
declare, between the Sovereign and the Church 
of England. If history can be relied on, those 
relations are nearly **two centuries older than 
the revival by Charles the Great of the Ro- 
man Empire, and more than two centuries 



134 The English Reformation. 

older than the recognized kingdom of all 
England." ^ The enactments are declaratory, 
not creative. 

It is no doubt true that Theodore of Tar- 
sus, the seventh archbishop of Canterbury 
(who was sent to England in 608 by the then 
Pope, at the request of the kings of Northum- 
bria and Kent),^ did much to bring the island 
into nearer relations with the Bishop of Rome. 
He did not, however, whether he intended it 
or not, subjugate the Church of England to 
the Pope. **When, for example an attempt 
was made to enforce the ina?idates of the 
Pope as distinguished from his fatherly ad- 
vice, it met with a vigorous repulse from two 
successive kings, assisted by their clergy, who 

8 "Church Quarterly Review," Oct. 1876, p. 232. **The 
union of Church and State dated, in fact, from the very first 
appearance of the Church in the English realms, and became 
so blended with the Constitution itself as to have been com- 
pared to the mysterious and inseparable connection between the 
soul and body of an individual man." Brooke's **Six Judg- 
ments of Privy Council," Int. p. xiv.; Comp. Hook's "Lives 
of Archbishops," vol. iii., Introd. 

Bede, "Eccl. Hist," book iii., c. 29. iv. c. i. 



The English Reformation, 135 

thus stand at the head of a line of champions 
in the cause of English freedom." It is also 
true that William the Conqueror separated 
the temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, 
and ordered bishops to hold courts of their 
own, but ** the severance was effected by, and 
the new courts derived their jurisdiction from 
the Crown with the advice of the Great Coun- 
cil."^'' I do not know that anything need be 
added to show you what was the ancient 
rule as to the Sovereign and the Church in 
the realm of England. 

The slightest acquaintance with English his- 
tory will suffice to convince any man that this 
rule of relation had been perpetually disturbed, 
and even broken up, by the long continued 
and persistent usurpations of the papacy; and 
that, in any practical reform of the English 
Church its readjustment must challenge at- 
tention and action. We need not inquire 
whether the rule was the best that could be 
devised or not. The existing evil was pres- 
to Hardwick, "Middle Ages,'* p. 16, n. I, and Brooke, <<Six 
Judgments," etc., Int. p. xiv. xv. 



136 The English Reformation, 

ent and pressing. It had been superinduced 
upon a former condition of things which had 
a strong hold upon the memories and the af- 
fections of Englishmen; and which was special- 
ly connected with the name of the Confessor, 
of whom it has been said, ** His was the one 
figure that stood out bright against the dark- 
ness when England lay trodden underfoot by 
Norman conquerors; and so dear became his 
memory that liberty and independence itself 
seemed incarnate in his name."^ How strong 
and lasting this feeling was is proved by the 
striking fact that from, at least, the time of 
Edward H., in 1308, till the Revolution of 
1688, the sovereigns of England either in the 
coronation oath or in promises connected with 
it were pledged to maintain for the realm the 
laws of Edward the Confessor.^ What could 
be more natural than to recur to this an- 
cient order ? What could seem more practi- 

> Green, "History," etc., vol. i. p. 104. 

2 Taylor's ** Glory of Regality," pp. 329, fT. 409. William 
the Conqueror and Henry I. were both compelled to promise the 
maintenance of these laws. 



The English Reformation, 137 

cal, as all men's thoughts then ran, than to 
remove the later writing in the palimpsest, 
and recover the older which it had displaced ? 
Our present questions, then are these: Was 
this recurrence made ? In making it was any 
breach effected with the past in the historic 
Church of England ? These queries can be 
answered only by considering what was act- 
ually done at the period of our Reformation; 
not, I beg you to observe, what Henry VIII. 
wished to do; not what he attempted to do 
by the help of servile ecclesiastics or servile 
politicians; not what he did, or what others 
after him have done, by disregard or perver- 
sion of law; but what was actually done by 
joint action of Church and State; what, by 
such joint action, became the law of the 
Church and the Realm, whoever might evade 
it or violate it then, or in time to come. 

Leaving to one side needless historical de- 
tails, we shall find our inquiries fastening on 
four things: the Praemunire of 1529-31, the 
Submission of the Clergy in 1532, the Statute 
of the Appointment of Bishops in 1533, and 



138 The English Reformation, 

the Act of Supremacy of 1534. There can, 
I think, be no doubt that the purposes of 
Henry all through, were selfishly and out- 
rageously tyrannical; that he was attacking 
not merely the usurped jurisdiction of the 
papacy but the liberties of the Church of 
England solemnly secured by Magna Charta,^ 
and that whenever he could he overrode the 
limitations of law in favor of his own good 
pleasure. However, as has just been said, it 
is not what Henry purposed or did, but what 
the law was that we are concerned to know. 
Let it never be forgotten that the Reformed 
Church of England is in no way responsible 
for Henry VHI. 

In 1529, Wolsey had been brought, most 
unfairly, under the operation of the statute 
of Praemunire for exercising his legatine of- 
fice in England. I say unfairly, because the 
King '*had granted him a license under the 
great seal to use the authority of a legate, 

3 The first provision of Magna Charta, as confirmed by Henry 
m. is, that **the Church of England shall l« free.** Gibson's 
"Codex," etc., vol i. p. i. 



The English Reformation, 139 

and had allowed the function of legate to be 
discharged by him for fifteen years."* That 
however was as nothing to Henry. The stat- 
ute was applied, and the late all-powerful fa- 
vorite became an outlaw from the royal pro- 
tection, and incurred the forfeiture of his 
*^ lands, tenements, goods and chattels " to 
the Crown. Nor did the matter end here. 
The statute of Richard II., under the oper- 
ation of which Wolsey had been brought, 
provided that all *' abettors, maintainers, fau- 
tors and counsellors " of one who should vio- 
late it were to incur the same penalties 
as the principal. So that the entire clergy 
and all the laity of the kingdom — in other 
words the whole realm — lay at the mercy 
of the King, and were liable to forfeiture 
of goods and even life unless he should be 
moved to pardon them ! A more arbitrary 
and monstrous proceeding can hardly be 
imagined. 

As to the laity, it is enough to say that after 
servile submission on the part of the commons 

4 Dixon, "History," etc. vol. i. p. 46. 



140 The English Reformation, 

and sharp reproof on that of the King, fol- 
lowed by a brief delay, the pardon was issued 
and the nation relieved. In the case of the 
clergy, it was only by the payment of an 
enormous fine ^ that their release was secured. 
When the Act, by which its share of this 
fine was to be guaranteed, came before the 
Convocation of Canterbury, a new title for 
the Sovereign was found in its preamble, in 
the words **The English Church and Clergy, 
of which he (the King) alone is Protector and 
Supreme Head."^ The words were probably 
introduced by the advice of Thomas Cromwell, 
and mark the beginning of his injurious inter- 
meddling with the Church."^ Be that as it may, 

5 About $7,500,000 of our money. 

« Wilkins, '<Conc." iii. p. 725. 

7 Card. Pole asserts this on what would seem to be sufficient 
testimony. I do not think Mr. Blunt is quite justified in connect- 
ing Cranmer's name with this matter, on the ground that in au 
alleged conversation with Fox and Gardiner concerning the divorce^ 
he spoke of the King as supreme over all causes in the realm to the 
exclusion of the Pope and all other foreign potentates. He only 
asserted in this an undeniable historic fact. ** Reformation,*' p. 
204. 



The Eitglish Reformation, 141 

Convocation refused to pass the preamble with 
the new title, and thus the title sought for was 
rejected. Another was then proposed; so that 
the words should read, '*of which he, after 
Gody is the Protector and Supreme Head." 
This might not have seemed to differ much 
from, certainly not to go beyond, the words 
of the laws of Edward the Confessor^* the 
Vicar of the Supreme King." It was, how- 
ever, rejected; for fear, no doubt, that under 
it the Sovereign might claim spiritual power 
and even authority of ministering in holy 
things. 

At this juncture of affairs Archbishop War- 
ham presented to Convocation a third proposi- 
tion, namely that the words of the preamble 
should be, *^The English Church and Clergy, 
of which we recognize his majesty as the sin- 
gular protector, the sole and supreme ruler, 
and eveUy so far as is allowed by the law of 
Christ, the Supreme Head." And with this 
form the King was obliged, however unwill- 
ingly, to content himself. 

The Convocation of York accepted the pre- 



142 The English Reformation, 

amble with even less readiness than that of 
Canterbury. Tunstal, Bishop of Durham,^ who 
in the vacancy of the archiespiscopal see pre- 
sided, spoke with great clearness and modera- 
tion upon the subject; limiting the supremacy 
to temporal matters; saying, ^Hhat, we are all 
willing to acknowledge"; and adding, **with 
this explanation the English clergy and par- 
ticularly myself are willing to go to the ut- 
most length in the recognition." Still he 
complained of the ambiguity of the title, 
and the easy possibility of its perversion. 
All this brought out explanations from the 
King. He intended, indeed, to claim power 
and jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons 
as well as civil magistrates; **but he meant 
no intrusion into the sacerdotal functions. 
Only so far as spiritual things included prop- 
erty and justice, whatever power was neces- 
sary to preserve the peace of society was 
comprehended in the commission borne by 
the supreme ruler." 

8 Walter Haddon iii his epitaph on Tunstal calls him, aureus 
iste semx. 



The English Reformation, 143 

In all this there is, surely, nothing to ob- 
ject to. There is almost nothing beyond the 
power of review which civil courts in our own 
country and our own time claim. The title 
itself, as I have already said, does not at all 
go beyond that given to Edward the Con- 
fessor; there is really nothing in it but ^'the 
strong assertion of an ancient right"; a right 
which nobody was disposed to deny.® It is, 
therefore, a reassertion of ancient usage, and 
effects no break with the past of the historic 
Church of England. 

Before we leave^this matter of the royal 
title one thing more must be considered. By 
adopting the preamble of an act in which it 
was simply mentioned — and that only after 
debate and explanation — the King obtained 
and the Convocations gave an ** incidental 
recognition of the royal supremacy." Possi- 
bly the chief danger of its abuse lay in this 
very thing; the lack of definite assertions and 
limitations. Still, we must remember, the 

9 Dixon, "History," etc., vol. i. pp. 66, 67; Blunt, "His- 
tory," etc., p. 209. 



144 The English Reformation, 

possibilities covered by this indefiniteness are 
not all in one direction. If it gives room for 
usurpation and oppression, it also leaves room 
for resistance. 

We have next to see how this incidentally 
and indefinitely asserted supremacy was de- 
fined and, as we may say, practically applied. 
And first I must speak of what is known as 
''The Submission of the Clergy" in 1532. This 
followed on a memorable document addressed 
by the Commons of England to the King, 
and known as ''The Supplication against the 
Ordinaries."^'' Some of the complaints in this 
document were undoubtedly well founded, 
some were exaggerated, and others had no 
foundation. It is not at all improbable that the 
Supplication was due, in the first instance, to 
royal suggestion. However that may be, the 
King made it the occasion of immediate ac- 
tion. He sent to Convocation a demand con- 
tained in three articles: First, that no consti- 
tution or ordinance should be enacted by the 

»o It should be remembered that the title Ordinary did not 
imply that its holder should of necessity be a bishop. 



The English Reformation. 145 

clergy or put in execution in the realm, with- 
out the royal authority and assent. 

Second, that whereas many of the provincial 
constitutions were prejudicial to the King's au- 
thority and onerous to his subjects, a com- 
mission of thirty-two persons — sixteen from 
the two houses of parliament and sixteen 
from the clergy — should be appointed by the 
King, who should review these canons and 
abrogate such of them as they saw fit. 

Third, that other existing constitutions 
should stand only when they had received 
the royal assent. 

The sweeping character of these demands 
shews, I think, what the King's purposes were; 
namely, to abrogate all the existing laws of 
the Church and to concentrate the entire law- 
making power in himself Had this plan been 
fully carried out, not one law of the Church 
would have remained from the past, not one 
could have been enacted for the future, save 
at the pleasure of the Sovereign. The sub- 
jugation of the Church to the State would 
have been complete. It was not carried out. 



146 The English Reformation, 

however, and the danger of a break with 
all the past was avoided. We have now to 
see what was done, and in what the action 
resulted. 

The third article, which was the really ob- 
noxious one and contained the demand for 
complete subjugation was, at all hazards, res- 
olutely refused. Refusal involved great and 
unknown personal dangers, but all risks were 
bravely incurred, and the refusal was absolute. 
The King yielded, and the article so fraught 
with evil was virtually withdrawn. 

What was done, and what settled the rela- 
tions of Convocation and the Crown, is con- 
tained in the famous Submission of the Clergy. 
This Act of Convocation provided that hence- 
forward that body should enact and promul- 
gate no canons or constitutions except as it 
was licensed by the King to meet for business; 
that all canons thus passed should receive 
the royal assent before they were executed or 
put in urc; and, further, that a commission of 
•thirty-two persons should be appointed by the 
Crown, at the head of which was to be the 



The English Reformation, 147 

King himself, who should review the existing 
canons and constitutions, and abrogate such 
as, in the opinions of ^^ the most part," did not 
stand with ^* God's laws and the laws of the 
realm"; provided, that such as ^^the most 
part" determined to be accordant with the 
laws of God and of the land should, under 
the royal assent, ** stand in full strength and 
power." 

Thus the firmness of Convocation frustrated 
the tyrannical purposes of the Sovereign; and 
the demand which would have swept away all 
existing canon law, placed all present and 
future ecclesiastical legislation entirely in the 
Sovereign's hands, and made the Church the 
merest creature of the State, was refused. It 
is one of the many instances, too many to 
be lightly passed by, in which the overruling 
providence of God has preserved the Church 
of England from external attacks or internal 
evils which threatened her destruction. 

The commission, I must say in passing, of 
thirty-two persons to revise the canon law 
was never appointed in Henry's reign. In 



148 The English Reformation, 

1551, under Edward VI., a commission of eight 
persons did revise the ecclesiastical law, and 
their labors resulted in what is known as the 
Reformatio Legum, As this code never re- 
ceived the royal assent, it is only useful for 
historical appeal as to opinions and princi- 
ples. It never possessed any legal authority. 
Following the Submission of the Clergy 
came, in 1534, the **Act of Supremacy" 
passed by Parliament alone. This act rec- 
ognized the right of the Sovereign — it did not 
undertake to create it — '' to visit, repress, re- 
dress, reform, order, connect, restrain, and 
amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, con- 
tempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, 
which by any manner of spiritual authority 
or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be 
reformed."^ This statute undoubtedly gave 

' 26 Hen. VIII. chap. i. This was followed by another act 
making it high treason to ** attempt to deprive " the King, Queen, 
or heirs-apparent of *'the dii^nity, title or name of their royal 
estate, etc." It was a fearful statute, and fearfully used. But 
it disappeared at the accession of Edward VI. ; and at all events 
is no part of Church history proper. 



The Engli^sk Reformation, 149 

the King visitatorial power; but it did not 
confer new power nor power without limi- 
tation. 

It did not confer new power. If any testi- 
mony on this point can be considered sufficient 
to establish it, the testimony of Gardiner of 
Winchester, Tunstal of Durham and Stokes- 
ley of London must surely suffice. They all 
agree that *^ no new thing was introduced 
when the King was declared to be the Su- 
preme Head." Bracton, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury goes quite as far in speaking of the King 
as the Act of Supremacy does. Coke and 
Blackstone both assert that power was re- 
stored to the Crown not conferred upon it. ^ 
Stephens sums all up by saying that the re- 
sult of the acts was to enable the Sovereign 
" to reassMine his own authority, and the pre- 
rogatives of his Crown, from which the kings of 

2 Bracton, repeating the words of the laws of Edward the Con- 
fessor, calls the King ^^ Dei vicarhis tarn in spiritualibus quam in 
temporalibus.^^ See all the persons referred to, quoted in Blunt, 
"Reformation," etc., pp. 230, 233. See, also, Brooke's "Six 
Privy Council Judgments," p. xi. 



150 The English Reformation, 

England had never formally departed, though 
they had for a century connived at an invasion 
and usurpation upon them."^ 

Not being a new power created, but an old 
one recognized, neither was it a power with- 
out limitations. In its own revival, its old 
limitations must revive also, unless specifically 
barred out by statutory enactment. While, 
altogether apart from this important consider- 
ation, the very wording of the act shows, as 
has been well said, that the supremacy '^ is 
only made a corrective jurisdiction, and noth- 
ing is said about the directive jurisdiction by 
which the ordinary functions of the Church, 
when unaffected by offence or dispute, are 
discharged."* 

I think I may claim that the two questions 
asked some time back are now answered; that 
we are entitled to say that there was a 

3 Stephen's *<Eng. Constitution," vol. i. p. 193. Article 
XXXVI. of 1562— XXXVII. of 1571— must also be taken into 
account. Its testimony is specially to the point because it was 
passed on account of great perversions of the Supremacy. 

< Blunt, *« Reformation," p. 233. 



The English Reformation. 151 

recurrence to ancient usage in all the action 
we have been reviewing, and that there was 
no break with the historic part of the English 
Church. I know, indeed, that the vague word- 
ing of the Act of Supremacy left an oppor- 
tunity for Henry which he was not slow to 
seize, and of which I shall have occasion al- 
most immediately to speak. But the abuse 
of an enactment cannot be taken into account 
in its rightful interpretation. Nor may it be 
forgotten that the Act of Supremacy was re- 
pealed in 1553, and never again revived in its 
original form. Elizabeth refused the title Su- 
preme Head, and substituted for it that of 
'* Supreme Governor. ... as well in all spiritual 
and ecclesiastical things or causes, as tempo- 
ral." She also expressly repudiated in an 
*^ Admonition to simple men deceived by mali- 
cious," all idea of challenging *' authority arid 
power of Tninistry of divine service in the 
Church." And, moreover, in the statute by 
which the corrective jurisdiction of the Crown 
was restored, there were ''definite limitations 
which brought it into agreement with the 



152 The English Reformation, 

common law."^ Since Elizabeth's time inter- 
ferences with the proper legislative and ju- 
dicial functions of the Church have proceeded 
from Parliament rather than from the Crown. 
Let me sum up the matter in the words of 
Mr. Gladstone: *^A supremacy of power in 
making and administering Church law as well 
as State law was to vest in the Sovereign; 
but in making Church laws he was to ratify 
the acts of the Church represented in Convo- 
cation, and if there were need of the highest 
civil sanctions, to have the aid of Parliament 
also. In administering Church law he was to 
discharge this function [ecclesiastical courts 
remained] through the medium of bishops and 
divines, canonists and civilians, as her own 
most fully authorized best instructed sons, fol- 
lowing in each case the analogy of his ordinary 
procedure as head of the State." This may 
not be the best ideal settlement of the rela- 
tions of the Church and the State. But it 
was assuredly the only one possible in Eng- 

* I Eliz. c. I. Sec. 17. Injunctions of 1559, in Sparrow's "Col- 
lections," (1846), p. 12. Blunt, tit sup, p. 234. 



The English Reformation, 153 

land, as men's ideas went, in the sixteenth 
century; the only one possible if ancient En- 
glish precedent was to be appealed to, in 
throwing off the usurped jurisdiction of the 
papacy. It gave the State, indeed, rights of 
review, rights of promulgating ecclesiastical 
laws and ''putting them in ure" with the 
penal sanctions of civil law annexed to them; 
but it did not make the State the source of 
spiritual authority, or yield to it any other 
than a corrective jurisdiction. 

Just here the objections may be raised that 
the appointment of the bishops of the English 
Church was, by a statute passed in 1533, vest- 
ed in the Crown, and has so continued ever 
since *^; and that bishops received commissions 
from the Crown, revocable at the royal pleas- 
ure, by which they acknowledged themselves 
to be the officers of {lie King and nothing 
more'. From these premises the conclusion 

6 I do not take into account the temporary abrogation of the 
conge (T elire in Edward's reign; for the statute by which it was 
accomplished was not revived under Elizabeth. 

7 So Froude asserts, "History," etc. vol. v. p. 23, Am. Ed. 



154 The English Refqr^nation. 

is deduced that the Church became the crea- 
ture of, and was identified with, the State. 

Whatever else vtay be said as to the mode 
of Episcopal appointment under the Statute 
of 1533 ^his at least mzcst be said: — No real 
change from what had been its position all 
along came upon the Church. The statute 
itself says of the license issued under the great 
seal, which authorized election to a vacant 
see, ** as of old time hath been accustomed to 
proceed to the election of an archbishop or 
bishop of the see so void." Says Sir William 
Blackstone, *^The very nomination to bishop- 
rics, tliat ancient prerogative of the Crozvn^ was 
wrested from King Henry the First, and after- 
wards from his successor King John ; and 
seemingly indeed conferred on the chapters 
belonging to each see; but by means of the 
frequent appeals to Rome, through the intri- 
cacy of the laws which regulated canonical 
elections, was eventually vested in the Pope."^ 
There was, in fact, no real change. The elec- 

8 <* Commentaries," vol. iv. p. 107, Am. Ed., 1772. Compare 
Gibson's ** Codex," vol. i. p. 121, n. a. 



The English Reformation, 155 

tion by the chapter was a legal fiction before 
1533 as well as afterwards. The appointment 
by the Sovereign — leaving out papal interfer- 
ence — was not more a reality after that date 
than it was before. 

What is true of the election of bishops is 
also true of the commissions taken out in the 
reign of Henry and renewed in that of Edward. 
These, no doubt, on their face seemed to as- 
sert that all spiritual jurisdiction as well as 
temporal flowed from the Sovereign; so that, 
looking only on the surface, careless or preju- 
diced readers and writers are very likely to 
conclude that the bishops made themselves, 
by this act, only officers of the State. Like 
many another easily reached conclusion, how- 
ever, this one will not bear investigation. 

At the very outset we meet two historic facts 
which largely modify the conclusion just men- 
tioned. First, these commissions were taken 
out by sundry bishops, *^ Lee, Stokesley, Gard- 
iner, Longland, and Tunstal," who were all 
bishops of the *' old learning " as it was called, 
and whose sentiments as to the source of spir- 



156 The English Reformation, 

itual authority are perfectly well known. Next, 
in the commissions themselves are found such 
words as these: '* to execute all other parts of 
episcopal authority, beside and beyond those 
which, by the Holy Writings are recognized 
as divinely committed unto thee." This ex- 
press exception of divinely-given powers, 
proves, beyond a question, that there was 
believed to be somewhat in the office of a 
bishop which did not come from the State; 
while the retention and use, all along, of the 
rite of the ordination or consecration of a 
bishop, shows precisely what that was.^ 

Canon Liddon thinks that Bonner's commission, which is 
extant, implies that Thomas Cromwell could have held ordina- 
tions had he not been too much occupied, and that, for this reason 
alone, they were committed to the Bishop of London. I cannot 
so read his commission, nor that of Cranmer in the reign of Ed- 
ward VI. Two things are plainly mentioned; first, ordination, 
second the JiJtding Jit persons to be ordained and instituted to 
benefices. 

Now, considering the distinction so clearly made in the ** Institu- 
tion'* between power of orders and power oi jurisdiction^ a dis- 
tinction so familiar to Bonner, Cranmer, and all others, is it not 
much more likely that what Cromwell was too busy to attend to 
was, not ordination involvmg the potcstas ordinis, but the other 



The English Reformation. 157 

Still, it may be asked, What did the com- 
missions mean ? What power were they sup- 
posed to convey ? The answer to those ques- 
tions is not far to seek. I shall venture to 
present it somewhat in detail, inasmuch as it 
involves principles, the misapprehension of 
which has left many well-intentioned persons 
in an obscurity almost Cimmerian as to the 
English Reformation. 

In the year 1537 there appeared the Formu- 

matters which involved only the potest as juris dicHonis? Such an 
explanation is in accord not only with The Institution of 1537, but 
also with The Erudition of 1543, which says, that **The nomina- 
tion, election, presentation, or appointing of ecclesiastical ministers 
is wholly left unto the positive laws or ordinances of every Chris- 
tian region, provided and made, or to be made, in that behalf with 
the assent of the prince and ruler; " and at the same time asserts 
that the power of ordination is given to bishops by the " Word of 
God" These are the words of that saving clause in the commis- 
sions, in which Canon Liddon finds it ** difficult to think that the 
power of ordination was included." On the contrary, it is difficult 
to see to what else they can possibly refer. If we are to guard 
against what is called " Anglican optimism," let us not forget that 
there may be such a thing as Anglican pessimism. See Liddon's 
*' Church Troubles," p. xiii. note 4; Dixon's "History," ii. 168; 
** Formularies of Henry VIIL, his Reign," p. 277. 



158 TJie English Reformation, 

lary known as the '* Institution of a Christian 
Man." It was drawn up by a commission con- 
sisting of all the bishops and twenty-five other 
divines, and — it is to be specially noted — among 
the bishops are found all those who took out 
the commissions from the Crown, — on which 
such stress has been laid, — in the reign of 
Henry. Now in that part of the Institution 
which treats of Holy Orders, the jurisdiction 
of bishops is discussed at length. Wherefore, 
inasmuch as the same persons who received 
commissions of jurisdictions from the Crown 
here set forth their judgments concerning 
jurisdiction, we learn from themselves what 
they understood those commissions to mean; 
and if there can be such a thing as a decisive 
contemporaneous exposition, we assuredly ob- 
tain it here. 

The discussion begins with the assertions 
that the *' whole power and authority belong- 
ing unto priests and bishops is divided into 
two parts, whereof the one is called potcstas 
ordinis [the authority of order], and the other 
is called potcstas jurisdictionis [authority of 



The English Reformation. 159 

jurisdiction];" and that **good consent and 
agreement hath always been in the Church 
concerning the said first part, and, contrary, 
much controversy for this other part of juris- 
diction." Jurisdiction is next declared to con- 
sist in three things: 

First, excommunication; in regard to which 
two limitations are insisted on; namely, that 
**all punishment which priests or bishops may, 
by the authority of the gospel, inflict or put 
to any person, is by word only^ and not by 
any violence or constraint corporal;" and also 
that such punishment may be forborne if it 
shall seem desirable for the well-being of the 
offender or the peace of the Church: 

Secondly, the power to admit to cure of 
souls in benefices, to which they have been 
nominated, persons whom they shall judge 
worthy; the right of nomination to bishoprics 
being recognized as resting in the Sovereign, 
and that of presenting to other benefices as 
vesting in the patron or founder: 

Thirdly, the power to make laws and can- 
ons touching ecclesiastical ministration. 



i6o The English Reformation, 

This entire jurisdiction, considered in itself 
and as a whole, is by the ^* authority of the 
gospel" committed to priests and bishops; yet 
the ''particular order, form, and manner req- 
uisite to the execution of the same," the enum- 
eration of offences, the organizing of courts 
for trial, the citation of offenders and of wit- 
nesses, the processes of procedure, the exe- 
cution of sentences, are not prescribed in 
Scripture but are left to the decision of the 
Church. Such decision was to be expressed 
in ''rules and ordinances to be made by the 
ministers of the Church, with the consent of 
the people, before such time as princes were 
christened, and after they were christened, 
with the authority and consent of the said 
princes and their people." 

Then comes the conclusion. "It is out of 
all doubt that the priests and bishops never 
had any authority by the gospel to punish 
any man by corporal violence; and therefore 
they were oftentimes moved of necessity to 
require Christian princes to intcrpone their 
authority, and by the same to constrain and 



The English Reformation, i6i 

reduce inobedient persons unto the obedience 
and good order of the Church; which the 
Christian princes .... not only did gladly 
execute, but did also give unto priests and 
bishops further power and jurisdiction in cer- 
tain other temporal and civil matters 

And therefore it was and shall be always law- 
ful unto the said kings and princes, and their ' 
successors, with the consent of their parlia- 
ments, to revoke and call again into their 
own hands, or otherwise to restrain all the 
power and jurisdiction which was given and 
assigned unto priests and bishops by the li- 
cense, consent, sufferance and authority of the 
said kings and princes, and not by the author- 
ity of God and His gospel^ whensoever they 
shall have such grounds and causes so to do 
as shall be necessary, wholesome and expe- 
dient." ^« 

10 "Formularies of the Reign of Henry VIII.," p. 107, ff., Oxf. 
1825. Dixon, "History," vol. ii., p. 167, 168. In 1825, in an 
examination before a select committee of Parliament, the Irish 
Roman Bishop Murray testified, that the Pope could exercise 
temporal power in states only when the right to do so had been *' con- 
ferred on him by the different Christian powers; " and that ** the 



l62 The English Reformation, 

Now, if words have any meaning, these 
words mean that while authority of jurisdic- 
tion as well as of orders is originally from 
God, the right to exercise that jurisdiction 
in definite places, in exterior courts, with 
coercive power and legal penalties is not 
from God but from the State. It is equally 
clear that it is not the former, but the latter 
power which the commissions contemplated, 
and that in this regard the Church of Eng- 
land stood, in the sixteenth century, on the 
same ground as any church which allowed 
ecclesiastical enactments and sentences to be 
enforced under civil sanctions and penalties. 
If in such churches ecclesiastical rulers did 
not, by such allowance, make themselves 
creatures of the State, no more did they in 
the Reformed Church of England.^ Well, in- 

power which he exercised under that authority, of course passed 
away, when those temporal princes who granted it chose to with- 
draw it." See Friedrich's ^^ Documenia,^^ etc., I. Abtheilung, p. 

237. 

1 There are passages, too long for insertion, but directly to this 
point, in Bramhall's "Just Vindication," Works, pp. 77, 134, 
Ed. 1677. 



The English Reformation. 163 

deed, would it have been for the Church if, 
remembering that no power to inflict cor- 
poral punishments on offenders had been given 
her from God, she had never sought such 
power from the State. Well would it have 
been for her had no such power been given 
her; no punishments touching life or limb, 
personal freedom or property, been inflicted 
by her; no carnal weapons been placed in 
spiritual hands. But such a thought was in 
no man's mind in the sixteenth century. 

While, however, what we have been con- 
sidering shows that neither by Church nor 
parliamentary enactment was there any break 
with the past, but rather a very careful re- 
currence to the ancient usage of the realm, 
it is equally true that Henry VIII. perverted 
or overrode these statutes for his own self- 
ish and tyrannical purposes. Still, law remains 
law however much perverted or overridden; 
and it is by it, and not by any illegal tyr- 
anny under it, that the English Reforma- 
tion is to be tested. *^ Henry's later view of 
the royal supremacy" no doubt ** appears to 



164 The English Reformation, 

have been that it contained within itself 
all the rights that had been claimed for 
the papal supremacy; but such a view was 
never recognized by any statute," nor by 
any subsequent practice. Both alike *^ re- 
strict it to the restoration of the ancient 
regal jurisdiction."^ 

The King's chief agent in carrying out his 
purpose of overriding law and concentrating 
power in himself, was Thomas Cromwell. This 
man, after a roving life of varied adventure, be- 
came a member of Wolsey's household, serv- 
ing that prelate *^ first as a steward, then as 
a solicitor, and lastly in that defence before 
the commons which laid the foundation of 
his own high fortunes."* This is not the 
place for any detailed account of Wolsey's 
plans for the reformation of the clergy and 
laity of England. There are, however, two 
things that should be noticed because of their 
connection with the matter now in hand. First 
in carrying out his purpose of increasing the 

2 Blunt, "Reformation," p. 235. 

' Cavendish, "Life of Card. Wolsey," p. 170, note. 



The English Reformation, 165 

number of bishoprics in England and estab- 
lishing colleges and professorships in the uni- 
versities, Wolsey proposed to provide the req- 
uisite endowments by suppressing the smaller 
and some of the larger monasteries, and ap- 
propriating their revenues. 

Next, in all his plans—whatever may be 
thought or said of them — he wrought first as 
Papal Legate, and, at last, as Vicar-General 
of the Pope, a post to which he was ap- 
pointed in 1527. 

A person, therefore, occupying as Cromwell 
did a position of trust and confidence in the 
Cardinal's household, must have become fa- 
miliar with the idea of a vicar -generalship, 
and accustomed to the thought of the sup- 
pression of monasteries and diversion of their 
revenues. In entering on the service of Hen- 
ry after he left that of his former master, with 
purpose, as he said, ^^to make or mar," these 
ideas and thoughts would naturally go with 
him; and we may, accordingly, without much 
hesitation, regard the institution of the Vicar- 
Generalship, and the treatment of the monas- 



1 66 The English Reformation. 

teries as directly due to him and to his train- 
ing under Wolsey. 

He became Vicar-General in 1535, and held 
the office till his fall in 1540. In his hands — 
the hands of an unscrupulous and time-serv- 
ing man — the office became an instrument of 
oppression and wrong.* But whatever it was 
made and however it was used, it was some- 
thing thrust upon the Church from without, 
not developed from within. It was endured 
like any other afflictiqn, but it was never ac- 
cepted, nor was the Church, in any proper 
sense, responsible for it. It lasted for five 
years till he who held it fell, and it was never 
renewed. However succeeding sovereigns may 
have put, as we may say, the supremacy *'into 
commission," no one has ever tried the plan 
of Henry VIII. His Vicar-General is the only 
one that England has ever seen. The pass- 
ing shadow cannot be said to be a part of that 
on which it merely fell. 

< Pole and Fox in their estimates of Cromwell illustrate the 
different views it is possible to take of the same character. The 
truth, as in most such cases, probably lies between the two. 



The English Reformation. 167 

The great line of practical operation on 
which the exercise of the vicar -generalship 
moved, brings up the visitation of the mon- 
asteries and their subsequent dissolution. Nei- 
ther the visitation nor the dissolution of these 
institutions, however, so originated with Crom- 
well, as to be properly his own. 

It had long been felt that reformation 
in this direction was essential. The number 
of the monasteries was excessive. The evils 
of multiplying them were recognized at the 
Lateran Council of 121 5; but the papal in- 
terests, which the monastic and other relig- 
ious orders served, were so potent, that the 
increase went on with little or no check. If 
it be true, as it has been estimated, that there 
was, at the time of our Reformation in Eng- 
land, one monastery or religious house to 
every three thousand souls, Wolsey's policy 
of diminishing their number is abundantly 
justified. 

The enormous wealth, also, of institutions 
the members of which were under vows of 
poverty, was discreditable to them while it 



1 68 The English Reformation, 

was injurious to the country. The proportion 
of Church ownership of land to other owner- 
ship in England was, according to any esti- 
mate, astounding, and it was largely in the 
hands of conventual bodies. The Church prop- 
erty, according to some writers, comprised 
more than half of the landed estates of the 
realm ;^ and the property of monasteries, at 
the Reformation era, covered from a tenth 
to a fifth of the soil of England. It surely 
is not necessary to suppose that all who 
might object to such an accumulation of 
wealth in institutions the members of which 
were to be the **poor of Christ," must neces- 
sarily have been covetous or seekers after 
spoil, any more than it is to believe that all 
this wealth had always been acquired by fraud- 
ulent and rapacious methods. 

Again, these institutions were exempt from 
the jurisdiction of the bishops, whose rights 
were, to that extent, annihilated; while the 
rights of the parochial clergy — scornfully called 

6 Spelman, "Hist, of Sacrilege," Ed. 1853, p. 200. Turner's 
** Middle Ages," vol. v. p. 169. 



The English Reformation, 169 

by those who arrogated to themselves the title 
of religious the seculars — as well as of the 
universities were seriously interfered with. A 
General Council had, indeed, forbidden in 
terms, such exemption, and had also de- 
creed that no monastery should be estab- 
lished in a diocese against the will of the 
diocesan.® Associations, however, which, in 
their zeal for strict obedience, prefer to obey 
superiors of their own selection rather than 
the authorities which ^* God hath set in the 
Church,"' will easily find methods by which 
c;anons can be overridden or evaded, as may 
be most convenient. In this case they had, 
also, the backing of the papal power. 

Beside all this, and after making every al- 
lowance for malicious slanders and unfounded 

6 Chalcedon, Canons IV. and VIII. 

7 I Cor. xii. 28; comp. Eph. ii. 20, and iv. 1 1. These pas- 
sages taken in connection with our Lord's words in John xv. 16, 
and XX. 21, together with the facts recorded in the Book of Acts, 
present the Scripture truth of the origin of the Christian Ministry, 
as against Dr. Newman's "development" theory on the one side, 
and the " natural selection" of Independency on the other. 



I/O The English Reformation, 

exaggeration, the frightful corruption of morals 
in many of the monasteries must be admitted. 
I cannot quote the words of Nicolas de' Cle- 
manges and of Gerson, the one Rector and 
the other Chancellor of the University of 
Paris;* but they are as severe as any words 
of Cromwell's agents. And when the Bishop 
of Worcester could write to Wolsey that he 
had ** often been struck with the need in which 
monasteries stood of reformation, and that 
great care would be required in dealing with 
nunneries, as -great abuses would be found in 
them";® when Wolsey, writing to the King, 
could say that there were ** exile [poor] and 
small monasteries wherein neither God is 
served nor religion kept,"^^ we can surely 
reach only one conclusion. 

More, perhaps, than all else, the monastic 
system was, at best, merely a human insti- 
tution; and, even if no question is raised — 

8 See Ilardwick's ** Middle Ages," p. 367. 

9 DeGigliis: quoted by Blunt, p. 56. 

10 "Three Chapters of Letters," etc. (Camden Society publica- 
tions), p. I. 



The English Reformation, 171 

as there well may be — touching the principles 
on which it was founded, there is sure to 
come **a point at which the best of human 
institutions cease to be a benefit to society, 
at least in the form in which they were 
originally founded."^ So it was in this in- 
stance. The system was out of joint with 
the entire condition of things in the six- 
teenth century. 

Nor were precedents for suppression lacking. 
To say nothing of what Wolsey had done dur- 
ing his administration, the Knights Templars 
had been suppressed as far back as 1307, and 
a number of ** alien priories" had shared the 
same fate in 1416. 

When, however, from the abundant reasons 
for reformation and even suppression, we pass 
to what was actually done by Henry, acting 
through his Vicar-General, we can only con- 
demn his methods and their results. I know 
that the Crown had, by English law, a right 
to all unowned or confiscated lands. I know 
that when possessions had been given to a 
1 Blunt, p. 280. 



1/2 The English Reformation. 

religious house, on certain defined conditions, 
then if those conditions ceased to be fulfilled, 
such possessions reverted to the donors or 
their heirs. I know that under those laws of 
the realm, part of the monastic property might 
have gone fairly to the Crown, and other por- 
tions to the families of founders. It is also 
true that, out of the spoils, six bishoprics were 
founded, five of which remain; that some mon- 
asteries became collegiate churches; that at 
least two hospitals were reserved for the 
poor; that many abbey churches became par- 
ish churches; and that some grammar schools 
were founded.^ 

Let all those abatements be made, and it 
still remains true that the methods of visita- 
tion and the acts of suppression were tyranni- 
cally cruel; that the disastrous appropriations 
of parochial revenues to monasteries (which 

' Perry, *'Eng. Ch. History/' pp. 137, 138. In the thirty 
years preceding the Reformation more grammar schools were 
founded in England than in three previous centuries; afterwards 
they increased even more rapidly. Knight, **Life of Colet," 
pp. 90, 91. 



The English Reformation, 173 

made so many appropriated parishes sinks of 
neglect and sin), went unreformed, because 
the appropriation was chiefly made over to 
the Crown; and that Henry seized for him- 
self and his minions what had been given — 
mistakenly no doubt in many cases, but still 
given — to the service of God. In the words 
of Burke, "the lion having sucked the blood 
of the prey, threw the carcass to the jackal 
in waiting."* 

But all this, I beg you to observe, did not 
touch the constitution of the historic Church 
of England. All this was done by men trained 
under other influences than those of the Re- 
formed Church of England, and for whose 
characters — I repeat what has been said before 
— that Church is not responsible. And what 
was true then, let me say in closing, is true 
now. The sharpest and most sweeping con- 
fiscations of Church property which our own 
age has seen, in France, in Spain, in Italy, on 
this Western Continent, have been made in 
countries where for generations previous the 

3 Letter to a noble Lord. 



174 The English Reformation. 

Roman Church held undisputed sway. The 
property of that Church is to-day safest from 
attack in lands like England and the United 
States, where she has neither trained the peo- 
ple nor shaped the laws. 



LECTURE V. 

Doctrine. 



LECTURE V. 

DOCTRINE, 

T HAVE now considered, with perhaps more 
minuteness of detail than may be deemed 
necessary, the constitutional reform of the 
Church of England in the sixteenth century. 
My reason for this minuteness is, that the 
charges against the EngHsh Church of hav- 
ing broken the line of her historic continuity 
and violently separated herself from the past, 
and, consequently, of being a new organization 
dating only from the reign of Henry VHI., 
and not organically connected with that liv- 
ing and self-perpetuating organism which the 
Church of Christ is and must be, are mainly 
sustained by mistakes or misrepresentations 
touching this constitutional reform. It is not 
difficult, I think, to see why this is so. A 
Church which holds firmly the great historic 
creeds, without mutilation or addition, is un- 



1/8 The English Reformation. 

assailable in regard to doctrine, except on 
the ground that ''the faith once given to the 
Saints" is not a deposit to be kept, but a 
germ to be developed. A Church whose offices 
of worship are linked by manifold ties with 
those of the far-off ages, retaining and repro- 
ducing original and essential elements and re- 
moving manifold incrustations, can hardly be 
attacked on that score without attacking, also, 
a good many other things which might better 
not be assailed. But if a break can be shewn 
to have been made in the historic continuity 
of the Church, involving an essential change 
in its constitution, then it may well be thought 
that every point has been gained. Moreover, 
** glittering generalities" of assertion in this re- 
gard, can only be met by those careful histori- 
cal examinations and discriminations of which 
the majority of men are not over-patient*; 

* Dr. Newman, in his ** Apologia" (App. p. 26), spoke with 
a good deal of contempt of "antiquarian arguments;" and 
afterwards (in a letter dated Aug. 5. 1868), explained himself 
thus: **On giving myself to consider the question [of Anglican 
Orders] , I never have been able to arrive at anything higher than 
9k probable conclusion^ which is most unsatisfactory except to 



The English Reformation, 179 

which it is easy to sneer at as a mere piece 
of antiquarianism; and in which, as I have inti- 
mated, it is equally easy to make mistakes and 
misrepresentations do the work of historic fact 
and logical argument. So, on the one side, 
those whose purpose is to convict the Church 
of England of the guilt of schism* from the 
continuous Church of Christ, and, on the 
other, those who desire to do away with all 
idea of the Church as a continuous and per- 
petuated organism, agree in asserting such a 
break with the past, and agree also in selecting 
the constitutional reforms of the sixteenth 
century as their chief points of attack.^ And 

antiquarians, who delight in researches unto the past for their own 
sake." W^hat Dr. Newman here pleases to call the antiquarian^ 
is really nothing but the historical argument. If moral certainty- 
based on such argument is not probable enough to be accepted, 
then surely human belief is shaken to its foundations and in a fair 
way to be destroyed. This, however, is only one out of many 
proofs of Dr. Newman's sceptical turn of mind. See, for the 
letter, Lee's "Orders of the Church of England," App. xx. 

5 " Cranmer and his coadjutors aimed at nothing more earnestly 
than the preservation of the continuity of the Church. Shallow 
people now regard them as the conscious founders of a new sect.'* 
Haddan, *« Remains," p. 382. 



i8o The E^iglish Reformation, 

this, over and above the consideration that 
these reforms necessarily came first in time, 
is the reason why they have been dealt with 
so much at length. 

Two other topics, indicated at the outset, 
remain; namely. Doctrine and Worship. The 
exigencies, however, of time and place permit 
me to deal only with the former; or at least 
with the latter only so far as it enters into the 
consideration of the former. Were it my pur- 
pose, as it is not, to present a historical view 
of the Anglican Reformation, such an omission 
would not be permissible. Since, however, my 
purpose has been to treat of principles and 
topics, selection among those becomes a ne- 
cessity. And I select doctrine rather than 
worship, not only because of its intrinsic im- 
portance, but also for the reason that in- 
formation on the last named subject is so 
abundant, and so easily accessible, that its 
omission makes what must, of necessity, be 
incomplete, less glaringly so than it would 
be were the alternative course adopted. The 
omission must not be understood as intimating 



The English Reformation, i8i 

that our reform in worship is any less defen- 
sible than the reform in doctrine. Far from 
it. I believe it can be proved to what is tan- 
tamount to a demonstration, that (to say- 
nothing of the Liturgy proper), ^'Rorne has 
cast away her ancient offices while England 
alone has retained hers;" and that '*with our- 
selves alone, at this day, there survives a pub- 
lic form which retains the characteristic out- 
lines and essential organization of the ancient 
offices."^ The consolidation of these offices, 
taking the place of such an accumulation of 
them as that the earliest ones for the morn- 
ing might be said overnight; the digesting 
of various uses into one uniform use for the 
whole realm; the clearing them of doctrinal 
errors; the omitting from them ceremonial us- 
ages, the multiplication of which obscured and 
made uncertain the central and essential act; 
the removal from them of ^* uncertain stories 
and legends," thereby making room for the con- 
tinuous reading of the Scriptures; the transla- 
tion of them into the vernacular English from 

6 Burgon's '* Letters from Rome," Letters x. xi. and xxv. 



1 82 The English Reformation. 

the Latin, — into which tongue Liturgies had 
been translated because their original Greek 
was no longer '* understanded of the people;" 
these things affect neither their structure nor 
their inherent character. And this is, in brief, 
what was done with them in the sixteenth 
century. With these few words, which, never- 
theless, set forth what I believe to be a fair 
summary of the Anglican reform in worship, 
and, also, indicate its great results, I turn to 
the special topic now before us. 

The first question that meets us is this: 
What was the condition of things in England 
in regard to doctrine at the time when our 
Reformation began to assert itself.^ And the 
immediate answer to the question is one for 
which we may well be thankful; the Catholic 
Faith as expressed in the historic creeds re- 
mained intact, at least in form. The Apostles' 
Creed stood as it stands to-day. The Confes- 
sion of Nicaea had nothing, expressly and in 
form, added to it. It begun and ended as we 
begin and end it now. There was appended 
to it nothing in the shape of those twelve arti- 



The English Reformation. 183 

cles which were added, under the authority of 
the Council of Trent and Pius iV"., after 1564. 
The Athanasian Symbol, contained **in the 
Psalm Quicunque vulty'"^ remained unchanged. 
So far no reform was needed, and so far no 
reform was attempted. It was no part of the 
purposes of our reformers ** to decline or vary 
from the congregation of Christ's Church in 
anything concerning the very articles of the 
Catholic Faith of Christendom."^ 

It seems to me that the unvarying persist- 
ency with which this position has been main- 
tained by our Reformed Church has not been 
sufficiently emphasized and insisted on. Per- 
haps one reason has been, — for half the trou- 
bles in the world of human thought arise from 
not distinguishing things that differ, — that 
writers, forgetting to discriminate among the 
matters handled during the progress of the 
Reformation, have laid down arbitrary periods 
as covering the entire work which really only 
cover certain distinct parts of it. The aboli- 
tion of the papal jurisdiction was, indeed, com- 

7 Art. I. of 1536. 8 25 Henry VIII., c. 21. 



184 The English Reformation. 

pleted in the reign of Henry VIII. But the 
questions connected with the royal supremacy 
were not finally adjusted till the reign of Eliz- 
abeth.^ The same thing holds true of doctrine; 
which came to its settlement in the same 
reign. While as to the worship of the Church, 
our view must be extended over a much wider 
range, even to the Prayer Book of 1662.^® And 

9 It is quite beside my purpose to speak of any after unsettle- 
ment of the Elizabethan settlement. Any such unsettlement has 
come rather from changes in the relations of Parliament and the 
Church than from any change in the relation of the Sovereign. 
So long as Hooker's celebrated dictum remained true, "there is 
not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also 
a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the 
commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England," par- 
liamentary legislation for the Church might well enough be re- 
garded as the act of a lay synod of the Church. But the moment 
this ceased to be true, then exclusion of subjects from parliament 
because they were not members of the English Church would cer- 
tainly appear to be an invasion of their civil rights. And when this 
wrong was righted and they were admitted to parliament, then to 
subject the Church to the legislation of a body so constituted would 
as certainly appear to be an invasion of the Church's rights. It is 
a wretched process to right one wrong by creating another. 

'0 I am speaking, of course, only of the English Church. For 
America we come down to 1789. 



The English Reformation. 185 

yet, ^*the great theological documents of Hen- 
ry's reign/' which ** only mark a stage in the 
progress of opinion, and a stage which under- 
went subsequently much modification," have 
sometimes been quoted as if they were of ulti- 
mate and conclusive authority for doctrine. 
And in the same way, *^the precise stage of 
opinion and practice that happened to be 
reached during the half-dozen years of the un- 
settled reign of Edward VI.," are accepted as 
a standard, and even termed our ^^ rightful in- 
heritance"; whereas they only record the ten- 
ets of a transition period, and can no more be 
accepted as a standard, than ^' the precise point 
reached in the earlier reign." ^ In the matter 
of doctrine, we begin our survey, indeed, in the 
reign of Henry, but we reach our conclusions 
only in that of Elizabeth, and in the year 1571. 
This is the period which I have in mind in 
speaking of the persistency with which our re- 
formers kept always in the forefront of all doc- 
trinal declarations, ^^the very articles of the 
Catholic Faith of Christendom." 

1 Haddan's '* Remains," pp. 372, 373. 



1 86 The English Reformation, 

There appeared in the reign of Henry 
VIII. three doctrinal formularies with which 
the Church was directly concerned, and one 
which is really due to the King and Par- 
liament only.^ To this last I shall have oc- 
casion to refer hereafter. The Ten Articles 
of 1536, contain the first doctrinal utterances 
of the English Church after the abolition of 
the papal jurisdiction. They were put forth 
in consequence of representations, made by the 
Lower House in Convocation, touching errors 
** publicly preached, printed and professed'*; 
while the detail of these errors shews that 
there were extreme opinions coming into 
prominence on the reforming side that re- 
quired to be looked after as well as mediaeval 
corruptions. Thus early are indications given 
of that double contest in which our Church 

2 I have not taken into account the XIII Articles of 1538 which 
exhibit the result of the Lutheran conferences of that year. Their 
chief historical interest centres in the fact that whatever passed 
from the Augsburg Confession into the Articles of 1552, passed 
through the medium of those Articles and not directly. See 
liardwick, **Hist. of Articles," c. iv., and App. ii. 



The English Reformation, 187 

has all along been compelled to engage, that 
"double witness" which it has always been 
her duty to bear. 

People have called her position in this re- 
gard a Via Mediay as if she had taken up a 
process of paltering, trimming and dodging 
between two opposing parties. There is no 
truth in this view, and, therefore, the phrase 
is as unmeaning as it is misleading. It may 
declare a result, but it certainly does not in- 
dicate the process by which the result was 
reached. The principle adopted was that the 
Faith was to be kept '* whole and undefiled"; 
whole as against subtractions, undefiled as 
against additions. But this, surely, is a posi- 
tive ground, and not a plan of compromise. 
Besides, what a strange sort of compromise 
would that be which should bring on a joint 
attack — that has lasted for three centuries — 
from the very parties it was intended to 
conciliate! Such a notion may be the high- 
est to which a political historian is able 
to rise, but it falls very far short of the 
truth. 



1 88 The English Reformation, 

Nor is the process which was really adopted, 
the line along which our reformers moved, 
open to the objection that it is merely nega- 
tive. That is, surely, a very positive process 
by which attempted subtractions from the 
Faith are resisted. While the correction of 
additions and accretions is negative only in 
form and not at all in result. Those were wise 
words which Archbishop Laud spoke to his 
Jesuit opponent: ^*It is a mere calumny that 
we profess only a negative religion. True it is, 
and we must thank Rome for it, our confes- 
sion must needs contain some negatives 



And in a corrupt time or place it is as nec- 
essary in religion to deny falsehood as to 
assert and vindicate truth; indeed this lat- 
ter can hardly be well and sufficiently done 
but by the former; an affirmative verity be- 
ing ever incbcdcd in the negative to a false- 
hood:'' 

To return to the Ten Articles. They were 
drawn up, as I have stated, by Convocation, 

3 Laud's " Conference with Fisher," p. 128. 



The English Reformation, 189 

on the representations of the Lower House, 
and by the royal command. And the point 
to which I desire here to call special atten- 
tion is, that the first article declares, that 
**the chief and principal articles of our faith" 
are ^^comprehended in the whole body and 
canon of the Bible and also in the three 
creeds or symbols;" and that those creeds 
are to be interpreted ** according to the self- 
same sentence and interpretation, which the 
words of the self-same creeds or symbols do 
purport, and the holy approved doctors do 
entreat and defend the same." There is a 
reference also, not only to the Councils of 
Nicsea and Constantinople, but to those of 
Ephesus and Chalcedon, *^and all others sith 
that time in any point consonant to the same!' 
In these last words, you will observe, there 
is expressed a very important limitation of 
any action of councils subsequent to the four 
expressly named. 

These words, and therefore the Article it- 
self, clearly contain, by direct assertion or 
unquestionable implication, the following prop- 



I go The English Reformation, 

ositions. First, that all things necessary to 
be believed are contained in Holy Scripture; 
secondly, that these fundamental verities are 
summed up in the historic creeds, which are, 
therefore, capable of being ** proved by most 
certain warrants of Holy Scripture;"* thirdly, 
that the creeds are to be interpreted in a 
natural and not a non-natural sense, in other 
words, that their meaning must come out from 
them and not be imported into them; and 
fourthly, that the testimony of the ** approved 
doctors of the Church " must sustain any af- 
firmed interpretation. 

Now, under these rules, questions of detail 
may, no doubt, arise. It may be asked, 
what books make up the Canon of Script- 
ure.'^ What is the proper wording of the 
creeds } What is the true signification of 
such and such phrases ? But these, and many 
other possible questions, relate only to de- 
tails, and leave the principles announced quite 
untouched. Nor have those principles (what- 
ever changes in some details there may have 

< Article VIII. of the Thirty-nine. 



The English Reformation, 191 

been), been changed among us for more than 
three centuries and a half/ 

5 The story of the publication of these Articles is curious. It il- 
lustrates the King's estimate of his own powers as a theologian and 
the way in which he tried to arrogate everything to himself. Crom- 
well, as Vicar-General and the royal mouth-piece, informed Convo- 
cation that though his majesty ** by his excellent learning knoweth 
these controversies well enough, yet he will suffer no common alter- 
ation but by the consent of you and of his whole parliament." One 
can imagine the Vicar-General uttering this precious bit of brag- 
gadocio. When, however, it comes to appear in the preface to the 
Articles, as published, it is softened down into a much more modest 
statement. " We have not only in our own person at many times 
taken great pains, study, labors and travails, but have also caused 
our bishops and other the most discreet and learned men of our 
clergy of this our whole realm, to be assembled in Convocation, 
for the full debatement and quiet determination of the same." 

Then again, the title of the Articles as they left Convocation — 
the MS. is in the British Museum — was, ** Articles about religion 
set out by the Convocation and published by the King's author- 
ity." But Henry garbled the title in the printing to read, "Arti- 
cles devised by the King's Majesty," etc. He left, however, in 
the preface the above-quoted passage which convicts his self-made 
title of falsehood. The simple truth is that Convocation drew 
up the Articles, and they were then published by royal authority. 
They are no more the King's, even if he suggested some changes 
before final action, than the decrees of Nice are Constantine's. 
Lloyd's "Formularies," pp. xvi. 4. Jenkyns's "Cranmer," vol. 
i. p. xiv. ff. Hardwick's "Articles," etc., c. iii. 



192 The English Reformation. 

**The Institution of a Christian Man," drawn 
up by a Commission of bishops and other di- 
vines appointed by the Crown, and published 
in 1537, and ^*The Necessary Doctrine and 
Erudition for any Christian Man," which was 
the work of Convocation in 1543, follow in 
the same line and begin with an exposition 
of the Apostles* Creed; thus continuing the 
prominent position given to the one historic 
Faith. These are the Formularies of Henry's 
reign. 

In none of them, however, does the prom- 
inence come out so distinctly, in none of 
them is the Catholic Faith set forth with 
such fulness, as in the XLII Articles of 1552 
and the XXXIX of 1562 and 1571.' The last 
named of these formularies is more complete 
than the former, because it contains an Arti- 

6 In the XI Articles, set forth by the Archbishops and Bish- 
ops in 1559, the first contains a profession of belief in the Holy 
Trinity, and the formulary falls, so far, into line with the other 
formularies mentioned. It was never, however, acted on synodi- 
cally, and was merely an ad interim. In Ireland it continued 
in use till 1615. 



The English Reformation, 193 

cle concerning the Holy Ghost which did not 
appear in the formulary of 1552. In the first 
five Articles of 1562 not only are the defi- 
nitions of Nicaea and Constantinople set forth, 
but those also of Ephesus and Chalcedon; 
and they contain, standing at the forefront 
of all else, a clear, balanced and exhaustive 
dogmatic statement touching the Trinity in 
Unity in its substance and its persons, and the 
person and natures of our Lord, His incar- 
nation, passion and resurrection. The Church 
of England refused to consider any theologi- 
cal question from any other than that stand- 
point. '' Before all things the Catholic Faith." 
So speaks our English Reformation. 

Just here, let me say a word as to the Con- 
fessions and Formularies put forth, during this 
period, on the continent of Europe. There is 
a marked difference, in the characteristic now 
under consideration, between the Formularies 
of the Saxon school of Reformers and those 
of the Swiss school; a difference not without 
significancy. The former, largely shaped by 
Luther, — the Augsburg and Saxon Confessions 



194 The English Reformation. 

— much more nearly resemble our Formularies 
than the latter — the Helvetic and the Belgic, 
— which bear the impress of the mind of Cal- 
vin. The Augsburg is, indeed, fuller and more 
distinct than the Saxon Confession ; yet it 
thrusts in between its declaration of the doc- 
trine of the Trinity and its setting forth of 
the person and natures of our Lord, a view 
of original sin and its consequences, thus mar- 
ring, so far, the unity and coherence of its 
statement of the Faith/ On the other hand 
the Helvetic Confession relegates its continu- 
ous statement of the Faith to its preface, 
(where it quotes the Decree of Gratian Val- 
entinian and Theodosius, and the Creed of 
Damasus), touches the doctrine of the Trinity 
only in its third article, and is silent as to the 
eternal generation of the Son, and the person 
and natures of Christ, till its eleventh article 
is reached. The Belgic Confession begins with 
a simple declaration of the existence and unity 
of God, proceeds to discuss various questions 
concerning Holy Scripture and our knowledge 

7 The same peculiarity is observable in the XIII Articles of 1538. 



The English Reformation, 195 

of God, and has nothing to say about the Faith 
before its eighth article.^ 

Two things, then, are very observable in all 
these Formularies; the first, — about which no 
more need be said than has been said already 
— that the whole Faith, in its due order and 
completeness, is not made, as it was by our 
Reformers, the one unvarying standpoint from 
which all questions then under discussion were 
approached; the second, that these fundamen- 
tal and settled verities are mixed up with 
questions and discussions of the hour, and are 
not kept in that position, not of prominence 
only, but of separation also, which is their due. 

From all this only one result can follow. 
The time of its coming may be longer or 
shorter as circumstances may hasten or re- 
tard it. But sooner or later it assuredly will 
come, and will bring with it confusion and 
disaster. The Faith degraded to the level 
of human speculations, reasonings and con- 
clusions, may be made, for a time, to give 

8 See '''• Sylloge Confessionum,^^ Oxford, 1804, and Augusti's, 
^^ Corpus Librorum Symbolicorum^'" etc. 



196 The English Reformation, 

to them — at least apparently and in men's 
apprehension — somewhat of its own estab- 
lished certainty and changelessness. But this 
unnatural condition will never last. In time 
this action will be reversed. Men will cease 
to attribute the assured certainty of the set- 
tled Faith to these speculations, reasonings 
and conclusions. Nor will they stop there. 
They will carry back the uncertainties of these 
last named things to the Faith itself, they 
can do nothing else. And then, when the 
congeries of human opinions collapses and 
breaks up, how can it be otherwise than that * 
the Faith should be involved in the common 
ruin .^ What can the result be but a ^' swept 
and garnished " house, ready to become the 
abode of those demons of denial and unbe- 
lief whose '^name is Legion".-^ The story of 
human belief and unbelief is full of examples 
that illustrate this position. Look at England 
for the fifteen years preceding 1660. Look at 
France to-day, where ultramontanism identify- 
ing itself, and all the loads it has laid upon 
the Faith, with Christianity, has carried Chris* 



The English Reformation, 197 

tianity with itself in its downfall, and brought 
so many persons to the conviction that if a 
man is not an ultramontane he must needs be 
an atheist. What, indeed, may not be in store 
for a Church which has overladen the Faith 
with such vast systems of belief, and taught 
people *^that to believe in Christ" involves 
all such belief as well ? Why should not the 
downfall of such systems of belief, a down- 
fall which must come if ever truth is to tri- 
umph, '*bury in its ruins the belief in Jesus" 
also ? ^ 

There is always a tendency in the human 
mind to separate one doctrine of the Faith, 
or one matter of opinion from its proper posi- 
tion and relations, to push it into undue prom- 
inence, and fill with it the field of vision. Ques- 
tions as to God's sovereignty, or man's free-will, 
or human depravity, or Baptism, or the Eu- 
charist, have thus been made, exclusively, 
topics for study and instruction. Other things 
have been passed by. And, therefore, even 
if the teaching has, in itself, been true — as it 
» Pusey's " Eirenicon," p. 242, fF. 



198 The English Reformation. 

has not always been — it has still been dis- 
astrous, because it has violated, completely 
and shamefully, the great and divinely sanc- 
tioned law that we are to teach '* according 
to the analogy of the Faith." ^® So men's im- 
aginations get mixed up with fundamental ver- 
ities, and even truths are dislocated and dis- 
torted till they take on somewhat of the same 
character. To use the words of Bishop An- 
drewes, spoken, indeed, of a period later than 
the Reformation, but true then and true in 
our own time: **This is the disease of our 
age and the just complaint we make of it; 
that there hath been a good riddance of im- 
ages; but for imaginations, they be daily 
stamped in great number, and instead of the 
old images, set up, deified and worshipped." 
Against all such ill-doing, the continuous 

*• Rom. xii. 6, "that is," says the Bp. of Lincoln, "according 
to the general symmetry and harmony of the whole body of 
Christian Doctrine and accord injjj to the relation or proportion 
{civaXoyia) of each special doctrine preached to that entire 
body of doctrine." See, also, Hooker, book iii. i. 5; and Bp. 
Andrewes, "Sermon on Worshipping Imaginations." 



The English Reformation, 199 

action of our Reformers from 1536 to 1571 
is a continuous protest. It has given to the 
Church of England with the National Churches 
founded by her and in communion with her, 
the glorious position of holding, and ^^ holding 
forth," the ^* entire Faith such as our Lord left 
it with the Apostles, to evangelize the world." 
Some of her sons may have abandoned her po- 
sition and their own plain line of duty. If 
they have, they have simply been unfaithful 
to their privileges and responsibilities. There 
may have been, there have been, those who 
were ** suckled at her breast," and who yet 
'^have written concerning her even as men 
might write that were hired to make a case 
against her, and by an adverse instinct in the 
selection of evidence, and a severity of con- 
struction such as no history of the deeds of 
man can bear, have often, too often in these 
last years, put her to an open shame." Faith- 
less and froward children, we must remem- 
ber, are no unwonted spectacles in families 
or churches. But oh ! how many have there 
been in generations past, how many are there 



200 The English Reformation. 

now, who understand the full richness of this 
precious heritage;' who comprehend the full 
glory of the position in which the Reforma- 
tion placed the Church three centuries ago, 
a position which shall bring powers for ser- 
vice in the future that will overpass all pos- 
sibilities of service in the past; and who, be- 
cause of all this, are ready '* unshrinkingly to 
devote themselves to defending within her 
borders the full and whole doctrine of the 
Cross, with that mystic symbol gleaming 
down on them from Heaven, now as ever 
showing forth its inscription, * In this sign 
shalt thou conquer.'"^ 

When we turn from this prominent exhi- 
bition of the one Catholic Faith which, thus 
far, we have been considering, to doctrines 
and opinions which were special topics for 
examination and discussion in the sixteenth 
century, we shall find the formularies of our 
reformation remarkable for their moderation. 
Archbishop Bramhall takes special note of 
this characteristic and presses it with ear- 
1 Gladstone, **On the Supremacy," p. 86, ff. 



The English Reformation, 201 

nestness and cogency. He makes ** three con- 
ditions of a lawful reformation — just grounds, 
due moderation, and sufficient authority." And 
he says of the Romanists, ^* They fear our mod- 
eration more than the violent opposition of 
others."' 

Possibly moderation is not a word much in 
favor in our day. And, no doubt, it may be 
used to designate tempers and methods that 
are the reverse of commendable. When it is 
made the synonym of indifference, careless- 
ness, lukewarmness, cowardice, time-serving, 
or suchlike things, it can only be condemned. 
When, however, it is used to signify that tem- 
per of forbearance, that *^ reasonableness of 
dealing, wherein not strictness of legal right 
but consideration for one another is the rule 
of practice," that looking at a debatable ques- 
tion on all its sides, that willingness to modify 
*^the unhuman absolute" of a relentless logic 
by the manifold limitations and conditions 
which that refuses to consider, then we reach 
the kitieiHe6 of St. Paul, of which he says, 
2 <« Works," pp. 2i6, 957; Dublin, 1677. 



202 The English Reformation. 

*'Let your moderation be known unto all 
men."^ 

There are, of course, large classes of persons 
who, influenced by various causes, will refuse 
to consider the distinctions here insisted on, 
and will reject any and all ideas of moderation 
in reform as unworthy and even contemptible. 
It is hardly worth while to attempt to enu- 
merate these classes, or to go into a statement 
of the processes by which they reach their 
conclusions. However they may differ in oth- 
er matters there are two things in which they 
agree. They always seek for the truth in one 
or the other of two extremes, and that by 
inferring '' conclusion from conclusion, and 
projecting assumptions as if they were prem- 
ises";* ^rid they are always ready to shelter 
themselves under the cover of that modera- 
tion the benefit of which they refuse to others 
and against which they so passionately pro- 

3 The word is not from eiHOO, to yield, but from iixody that 
which is becoming. See Alford and Wordsworth on Phil. iv. 5, 
and I Tim. iii. 3. 

* Liddon's *' Speech on the late Bishop of Brecliin." 



The English Reformation, 203 

test. What was commended by such men as 
Hooker, Saravia, Bramhall, Hammond, and 
Sanderson can, however, hardly be treated as a 
cowardly devise of self-seeking time-servers/ 

This moderation appears in a very striking 
form when we contrast the Decrees of Trent 
with our Articles of Religion. In the former 
all canons of doctrine, in which so many med- 
iaeval speculations are solidified, end with an 
Anathema. Of these there are no less than 
one hundred and forty-one ! And they reach 
down even to those who question the canoni- 
calness of the Apocrypha or print works that 
have not been duly examined and approved. 
One may be pardoned for involuntarily recall- 
ing the words of the Psalmist, ** He clothed 
himself with cursing like as with his garment."^ 

On the other hand, in our Articles, whether 

5 See the passages, with many others, in Puller's ** Moderation 
of the Church of England," c. xvi. 

6 "Whoever incurs an anathema, is cut off from the commun- 
ion of the faithful; is regarded as outside the way of salvation and 
in a state of damnation; nor may any of the faithful have any 
intercourse with him,'* Bergier, ^^Dictionaire de Theologie.^'' 



204 The English Reformation. 

those of 1552 or of 1562 and '71, there is but 
one anathema; and that one is taken from 
Holy Scripture. It is an echo of St. Paul's 
words in the Epistle to the Galatians, where 
he says of man or angel who shall preach 
a Gospel different from that which he has 
preached (resting salvation on ** works of law" 
and not on the grace of God in Jesus Christ), 
^Met him be anathema."' The XVIIIth Ar- 
ticle, in which this single anathema occurs, 
deals with the same utter subversion of the 
Gospel which St. Paul condemns, and simply 
repeats his words.' 

7 Gal.i. 8, 9. 

8 The careful wording of the Article deserves notice. It does 
not at all assert, absolutely, that no man can or will be saved in 
**the law or sect which he professeth,'* but that he cannot be 
saved by what he does in it, without regard to the sacrifice of 
Jesus Christ. This was the error which, in regard to the 
Mosaic Law, the false teachers enforced upon the Galatians. It 
may be further observed, that the moderation of the English Church 
appears in later formularies; in the Convocation Book, wherc the 
strongest condemnation is expressed in the words *' he doth greatly 
err," and in the Canons of 1603-4, fifteen of which (out of the 
one hundred and forty-one) impose, indeed, excommunication; 
but there is nowhere any anathema. 



The English Reformation, 205 

Besides this general moderation in temper, 
there is also a noticeable moderation in state- 
ment touching points in controversy in the 
sixteenth century. There are two documents, 
one belonging to the reign of Henry VIII. 
and another which appeared late in the reign 
of Elizabeth, that very strikingly, though by 
contrast, illustrate this assertion. The former 
of these documents was drawn up in the in- 
terests of what we should now call Romanism, 
the other in the interests of Calvinism. Both 
are worth examining. They indicate the two 
great disturbing elements in the English Ref- 
ormation. 

There must, of course, from the beginning, 
have been those who opposed reform in Eng- 
land. They may be roughly, but I think 
sufficiently, classified as follows: those who 
deprecated any change whatever, those who 
accepted the abolition of the papal jurisdiction 
but would have stopped with that, and those 
who acquiesced in the Ten Articles and the 
Institution, but would have gone no further. 
Here, obviously, is the nucleus, perhaps even 



2o6 The English Reformation, 

more, of a reactionary party. Various things 
and events contributed to swell the numbers 
of such a party and increase its power. The 
anarchical teachings of anabaptists and other 
sectaries, the jealousies occasioned by the con- 
ferences with continental reformers, especially 
the visit of the ** German orators" in 1538, the 
dissolution of the monasteries, sympathy for 
Katharine of Aragon and the Princess Mary, 
the passing of the Act of Succession and the 
executions of More and Fisher; these, and oth- 
er things that need not be mentioned, helped 
to build up a party of reaction. Henry must 
have given it his sympathy; for the document 
in which reaction culminated is said to have 
been carried through Parliament by the per- 
sonal presence and influence of the King him- 
self. 

The Act was passed in 1539, and was known 
as the Six Articles, or, more familiarly the Six- 
stringed Whip. These are due to the King 
and the Parliament. They were not drawn 
up by Convocation, and only received from 
that body a formal sanction. ** It was a new 



The English Reformation, 207 

Heresy Act, proceeding not from the Churchy 
though sanctioned as to doctrine by the South- 
ern Convocation; but from Parliament, at the 
commandment of the King, and on the in- 
stance of a layman."® 

9 Dixon, " History," etc. vol. ii. p. 122. The history of the 
Act is not a little perplexed. It would seem that m April 1539, 
the Lord Chancellor, Audley, stated to Parliament the King's de- 
sire that "diversity of religious opinions should be banished from 
his dominions," together with a proposal that a committee of the 
Upper House should be appointed "to examme opinions and to 
report their decisions to the whole Parliament." This Committee 
was appointed on May 5th, and consisted of the Vicar-General, 
and twelve or eight bishops — accounts differ. The Vicar-General 
left the discussion to the prelates, who came to no agreement in 
regard to the six questions submitted to them; which were drawn 
up by the King himself, and undoubtedly contained the embryon 
if not the matter of the Six Articles. After ten days' delay, the 
disagreement of the prelates was announced, and the Duke of 
Norfolk laid the six questions before the House of Lords, with the 
mot d* ordre, "Let the matters in dispute be determined openly 
and freely in full Parliament; and let a penal statute be passed," 
etc. A debate followed: on the third day of which the King ap- 
peared in person, arid took part in the discussion in favor of the 
proposed Act. Then, on May 23d, a Committee of the bishops 
was appointed to confer with the King and yielded to him at last. 
Upon this, two committees were appointed to draw up two forms 
of a statute, one of which should be passed by Parliament. The 



2o8 The English Reformatio7t, 

The ** ferocious penalties" inflicted by the 
act I need not state, because I am not writ- 
ing its history, but calling attention to the 

King, however, appears to have finally drawn up the statute him- 
self ; and it was passed, after some additions by the Commons, in 
June. 

** Meanwhile," says Mr. Blunt, "the six questions had been 
submitted, on June 2d, to a pro forma meeting of Convocation 
[the Southern] , in which the prolocutor was the only viember of 
the Lower House present^ and they were all answered in the affir- 
mative." On the other hand Canon Perry asserts, that *'the 
Convocation of Canterbury was consulted on the six points, and 
answered them all affirmatively: Bishops Latimer and Shaxton, 
Doctors Crome and Tailour being dissentient." 

Whichever of these accounts is correct. Convocation, and there- 
fore the Church, is not responsible for the matter or the form of 
the Six Articles. If it acted only pro forma, as Mr. Blunt says, 
it did not really act at all. If it did formally accept foregone con- 
clusions and definitions, they were only forced upon it, and did 
not proceed from it. 

Mr. Blunt thinks that Cranmer voted for the Act. *' Reforma- 
tion," p. 475. Dr. Hook takes the same view. ** Lives," etc. 
New Series, vol. ii. p. 46. But it is worth while to compare 
Todd's statements in his "Life of Cranmer," vol. i. p. 272, fT; 
and what Cranmer himself said to the Devonshire rebels, and in 
his answer to Gardiner, Jenkyns's " Remains," vol. ii. p. 212; 
iii. p. 366. The Act was mitigated in 1543, and finally repealed 
in the first year of Edward VI. 



The English Reformation, 209 

immoderate and excessive form of its state- 
ments. Its six provisions embraced the anni- 
hilation of the elements in the Eucharist; the 
sufficiency, by the law of Gody of communion 
in one kind; the forbidding by the same laWy 
of marriage to priests; the obligation of vows 
by the same laiv\ private masses to be con- 
tinued as agreeable to God's law; auricular 
confession to be retained as expedient and 
necessary. A balder, harsher, more extreme 
statement of the doctrines maintained — with 
the exception, perhaps, of the last — cannot 
be imagined. There is an unrelenting exact- 
ness in it which may commend itself to those 
who clamor for definitions of everything, but 
which is an outrage on Scripture, antiquity, 
and right reason itself. 

So much for the first document, let me now 
speak of the second; the one put forth in the 
interests of Calvinism, fifty-six years later on, 
the Lambeth Articles of 1595. Its history is 
an important one, and it requires something 
in the way of preface. 

There is not the smallest evidence that 



2IO The English Reformation. 

those five opinions — mostly metaphysical spec- 
ulations — which are known as the Five points 
of Calvinism, had attracted any special at- 
tention in England when the ^^Ten Articles" 
of 1536 and the ''Institution" of 1537 ap- 
peared. They could not have been much in 
men's minds, for Calvin's ''Institutes" were 
not published till 1536, and time enough had 
not elapsed before the above-named formu- 
laries were issued for his speculations to have 
gained much influence. In neither formulary do 
we find any trace of them. Predestination and 
reprobation are not so much as mentioned, and 
all the other parts of Calvin's system are dis- 
tinctly contradicted. The Six Articles of 1539 
are, indeed, not unlike Calvin's five, in severity 
of temper and excess of definition, but the 
two formularies have nothing else in common. 
When we come, however, to the " Necessary 
Erudition," in 1543, it becomes obvious that 
those who drew up that Formulary had Cal- 
vin's system in their minds; and it is equally 
obvious that they intended to reject it. I can- 
not quote passages at length. But no man can 



The English Reformation. 211 

read that work, and not see that the. severest 
and most repulsive doctrines of Calvin are de- 
nied in it, and denied not only pointedly, but 
with a certain degree of sharpness. 

This brings us to the Forty-two Articles of 
1552, and the Thirty-nine of 1562 and '71. Lord 
Chatham's thread-bare jest — which speaks more 
for his skill as an epigrammatist than for his 
knowledge of Theology — that *^the Church of 
England had a Popish liturgy, a Calvinistic 
creed, and an Arminian clergy," has, probably, 
shaped a good many peoples' opinions con- 
cerning these Articles. And we must admit, 
that if articles drawn up principally by four 
persons,^^ not one of whom was a Calvinist; 
articles which distinctly deny or pointedly 
omit every point of Calvinism, unless we ex- 
cept the single one of election to life; which 
state that one point in language that is not 
Calvinistic, accompanying it with two cautions 

10 Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper and Ridley. See Hardwick*s 
*' History of the Articles," c. v. As for Hooper, See Bishop 
Bull's "Harmonia Apostolica," Works, vol. iv. pp. 448, 453, 
454, 457. 



212 The English Reformation, 

which no Calvinist can accept, and two canons 
of interpretation which dismiss the Calvinistic 
theory to the regions of abstract, presumptu- 
ous and profitless speculation; that if such arti- 
cles can fairly be called Calvinistic, then those 
we are considering can. But they can be so 
termed on no other grounds and in no other 
way. So matters stood at the death of Ed- 
ward VI. 

The accession of Mary drove many of the 
reforming party to the Continent. When these 
returned, in the reign of Elizabeth, many of 
them had abandoned the principles and doc- 
trines of the English Reformation, and imbibed 
the views of the reformers of the Continent 
touching the Constitution the Doctrine and 
the worship of the Church, and more especially 
the theories of Calvin, — that Protestant scho- 
lasticism which took the place of the medi- 
aeval scholasticism in so many minds. Things 
came to a head when two members of the 
University of Cambridge preached against this 
foreign importation, and defended the plain as- 
sertions of the Articles of Religion. From the 



The English Reformation. 213 

controversy that ensued, came forth the Lam- 
beth Articles of 1595, bristling all over with 
the freshly burnished points of Calvinism, *Mike 
quills upon the fretful porcupine;" a Formu- 
lary, concerning the statements of which Arch- 
deacon Hardwick says, **We must despair of 
connecting them with the authorized Articles 
of Religion by any of the ordinary processes 
of thought." Frigid and cruel as arctic cold, 
that Formulary never acquired any synodical 
or other authority in the English Church. But 
it remains an instructive witness to that itch 
for definition which, even more than the itch 
of disputation is the veritable Scabies Eccle^ 
sice} While, however, this system, as a sys- 
tem, was rejected, we must not forget the 
moderation that was shewn in dealing with 
the great underlying truths which it attempted 
to deal with metaphysically ; the truths of 
God's Sovereignty in grace on the one side, 
and man's free-will on the other. *' The Eru- 
dition" of 1543 sums up the matter in words 

^ ^^ Pruritus disputandV — said Sir Henry Wotton — Scabies 
Ecclesice, 



214 ^^^^ English Reformation, 

of golden wisdom which do not seem to have 
been forgotten: *^A11 men be also to be mon- 
ished, and chiefly preachers, that in this high 
matter, they, looking on both sides, so at- 
temper and moderate themselves, that neither 
they so preach the grace of God that they 
take away free-will, nor, on the other side, 
so extol free-will that injury be done to the 
grace of God."^ Chrysostom or Augustine 
need have asked no more than this. 

Let me now call attention to an instance 
which shows that this moderation, of which 
I have been speaking, was in no way incom- 
patible with the clearest assertion of a truth 
which was believed to have been invaded in 
a way that had disturbed what we may call 
the balance of doctrine. In the years 1550 and 
1 55 1 there was a controversy between Arch- 
bishop Cranmer and Gardiner, Bishop of Win- 
chester, touching the Holy Eucharist. In the 

2 The style of ** The Institution " has often been remarked upon. 
Froude says: " In point of language it was beyond question the 
most beautiful composition which had yet appeared in English 
prose.'* ** History,'* vol. iii. p. 229, Am. Ed. 



The English Reformation, 215 

course of it Cranmer continually accuses his 
adversary of depraving the doctrine of Bap- 
tism and lowering the grace conveyed by it. 
No one can read Cranmer's final answer to 
Gardiner without seeing how he constantly 
recurs to and presses this charge. **This your 
saying is no small derogation to Baptism; 
.... You diminish here the effect of Bap- 
tism; .... blasphemous words against the 
Sacrament of Baptism;" in such expressions 
Cranmer reiterates his accusation that the 
primitive doctrine of Baptism had been de- 
praved and derogated from in the interests of 
transubstantiation. 

Turn now to the Baptismal Office of 1552, 
and fix your eye on the exhortation and 
thanksgiving that immediately follow the bap- 
tismal act. They appear then for the first 
time. You will not find them in the Book of 
1549. And, I doubt not, they were inserted 
because of that ** diminishing of the effect of 
Baptism'* to which the advocates of transub- 
stantiation have ever been prone, and as a 
protest against the exaltation of one sacrament 



2i6 The English Reformation, 

at the expense of the other. Strange that in 
our day words so inserted, and with such ob- 
vious purpose, should have been condemned as 
essentially and hopelessly Romish ! ^ 

I find my final illustration of the character- 
istic of our Reformation in its treatment of 
questions connected with the other sacrament, 
the Holy Eucharist.* The moment we ap- 

3 One of the earliest instances of the confusion of regeneration 
with conversion is found in the Council of Trent ! In the Decree 
concerning Original Sin — passed at the fifth Session in 1546 — it is 
said: "This concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls 
sin, the holy synod declares that the Catholic Church has never 
understood to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in 
those born again,'' etc. In the debates preceding the decree, Ber- 
tano asserted that the words born again were used purposely in- 
stead of baptized, because a person might be baptized without 
being really born again. Pallavicini, ** History," etc. book vii., 
c. ix.; compare Jarvis, "Answer to Milner." The Socinian For- 
mulary, known as the Racovian Catechism (published m 1609), 
asserts that "regeneration is nothing but the transformation of our 
mind and will and composure of them to the doctrine of our Sa- 
viour Christ, ds the very word doth intimate.*' J. J. Blunt, " Right 
Use of the Early Fathers," p. 427. 

< To those familiar with the work it is needless to mention my 
indebtedness, in what follows, to Archdeacon Freeman's "Princi- 
ples of Divine Service," vol. ii. part i. 



The English Reformation. 217 

proach that great mystery of our religion, 
we find ourselves in the presence of two 
truths, about which for eight centuries at 
least — probably for a longer period — there 
was almost no controversy in the Church. 
The one truth is that the Bread as blessed 
broken and taken is, in some way, the 
Body of the Lord broken,— and the Wine, 
over which thanks were given, is, in some 
way the Blood of the Lord shed, — in sacri- 
fice. The other truth is that the Bread and 
Wine remain in their own proper nature as 
Bread and Wine. 

Now this assertion of two truths to be held 
together, and possibly without the power of 
solving the mystery of their connection, is 
not something which is peculiar to the Eu- 
charist. To say nothing of instances that 
might be adduced from the laws and phe- 
nomena of our own physical and spiritual 
being, we find two — to name no more — 
which are precisely parallel in revelation. 
We find asserted, on the one side, the Unity 
of the Godhead in its essence, and, on the 



2i8 The English Reforynation, 

other, the Trinity of Persons. And again, 
we find asserted, on the one side, the sov- 
ereignty of God in grace as well as nature, 
and, on the other, the free-will of man. The 
parallelism of these instances with that of 
the Eucharist is apparent' from their state- 
ment. 

Now, under these circumstances, three courses 
of procedure are open to us. We may content 
ourselves with simply holding both truths with- 
out attempting to reconcile, or bring them into 
one, by any processes of human reasoning; and 
then we follow the implied counsel of the He- 
brew lawgiver, **The secret things belong unto 
the Lord our God, but those things which are 
revealed belong unto us."^ We may drop one 
of the two truths and retain the other; so 
Tritheism did when it dropped the truth of 
the Oneness of the Divine Nature, and so 
Sabellianism did, when it dropped the truth 
of the Tripersonality. Or, lastly, we may set 
ourselves about the task, beyond the power 
of human reason, of constructing a theory 
fi Deut. XXIX. 29. 



The English Reforestation. 219 

that shall reconcile to our understandings the 
two truths which we have not been bidden 
to reconcile but only to hold; so Calvinism 
set itself to reconcile, by metaphysical pro- 
cesses, God's sovereignty and man's free-will, 
and ended by practically denying the latter. 
The same attempted reconciliation of two co- 
existent truths has been the originating cause 
of almost all the controversies about the Eu- 
charist; which have largely ended, as all such 
controversies are likely to end, in the denial 
of one truth or the other; in the '^grosser 
forms or subtler refinements of the Papal 
solution" on the one hand, or the *'cold 
naturalism of the Zwinglian theory" on the 
other.^ 

We must not, however, forget that while 
neither of the two truths thus revealed can de- 
stroy the other, ^'each does, nevertheless, of 
necessity affect, in a negative way, the inanner 
in which the other exists or has place." The 
Unity of the Godhead holds back, so to speak, 

6 See Bishop Wilberforce's "Charge," in 1854, p. 55; «< Words 
of Counsel," xvii. 



220 The English Reformation, 

the Tripersonality from becoming Tritheism. 
The Trinity of persons holds back the Unity 
of the Godhead from becoming a denial of 
the Tripersonality. The grace of God — to re- 
cur to the other instance cited — must not take 
away the free-will of man, nor the free-will 
of man do injury to the grace of God. In 
other words two such truths, and therefore 
the two touching the Eucharist, must be 
held in balance. 

Now, this balance was just what the cen- 
turies-long controversy concerning the Eu- 
charist had disturbed, by the attempt to ex- 
plain and define to the satisfaction of human 
reason what God's Word had not explained, 
and the early Church had not defined. What- 
ever result was reached by this attempt, the 
process was essentially a rationalistic one. 
The speculations which end in transubstan- 
tiation are just as rationalistic in their char- 
acter as those which issue in the Zwinglian 
theory. And the wisest and truest Reforma- 
tion is to put things back to where they were 
before those disastrous speculative processes 



The English Reformation, 221 

had begun. And this, I contend, was what 
our Reformation did, not all at once but by 
*• just degrees."' That the balance shook and 
trembled somewhat before it settled is not 
wonderful, nor is it to the purpose. Nor are 
we specially concerned with the varying opin- 
ions of individuals. The result is what we ask 
for. Not many words will be needed in stat- 
ing it. 

I turn first to the words used in the delivery 
of the elements. We find in the Prayer Book 
of 1549, the first half only of our present form- 
ula. This embodies the first of the two truths 
above named and might — not fairly — be con- 
sidered as excluding the second. We find, 
again, in the Book of 1552, the last half only 
of our present formula, embodying the second 
truth, by making the *^ reception of the Body 
and Blood of Christ, not ordinary and physical 
but spiritual and heavenly." And this might 

7 "It was the speech of a wise Bishop, concerning too sudden 
a convert, ' I do not well like a man that tells me so presently he 
hath changed a whole religion at once.'" Puller, ** Moderation of 
the Church of England," p. 274. 



222 The English Reformation. 

be regarded — not fairly again — as excluding the 
first truth. But in the Book of 1559, we find 
both formulas combined — as we have them now, 
and so the two truths are brought together. 
Men may call this a compromise if they will: 
as, indeed, those who plant themselves within 
the narrow limits of mere partisanship will be 
sure to do. Those, however, who will not be 
content to echo the words of some single 
master, and can rise to the higher wisdom 
of a wise humility will see more than a mere 
compromise; will see the determination to bring 
two settled truths together in a balanced un- 
ion, and a refusal to divorce them in separated 
assertions. In precise accordance with this 
settlement, this restoration of a disturbed bal- 
ance, are the words of the XXVIIIth Article 
of Religion; which against the rationalism of 
Transubstantiation — condemned also in terms 
— assert that *'the Body of Christ is given, 
taken and eaten, in the Supper, only after an 
heavenly and spiritual manner;" and against 
the rationalism of Zwinglianism declare, '*that 
to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, re- 



The English Reformatiofi. 223 

ceive. . . the Bread which we break is a partak- 
ing of the Body of Christ, and likewise the Cup 
of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of 
Christ." Thus the two truths are asserted, 
and left where they were left by the early 
and undivided Church. 

I claim, therefore, for our English Reforma- 
tion what the great Bramhall claimed; the 
three conditions of ''just grounds, sufficient 
authority, due moderation." No human work 
indeed is perfect. But the results of that 
work have stood the test of time, and are, 
in their old age, bringing forth more and 
nobler fruits for God and man. 

As I come to the close of these lectures, I 
desire to repeat what I said at the beginning. 
It has not been my plan, nor would it have 
been in my power, to do more than select 
from the mass of to'pics which the English 
Reformation offers for study, those which bring 
to view the great principles acted on, the 
methods adopted, the agents employed, and 
the dangers incurred; to clear away some mis- 
leading side issues and irrelevancies; and to 



224 The English Reformation, 

correct some popular but unfounded misap- 
prehensions and misrepresentations. This was 
all that was hoped for; it is more, perhaps, 
than has been accomplished. 

And now as I look back on that eventful 
period, and forward from that period to the 
present, I stand in reverent awe and thankful 
adoration before the vision of the overruling 
and protecting hand of God, and recognize 
His seal upon the work, His living power in 
its outcomes. I see our favored Church pre- 
served from becoming a sect bearing the im- 
press and the name of any single leader. I 
see it doing its work on principles that, with 
whatever failure in individuals or single acts, 
have stood the tests of time. I see it checked 
when a check was needed, and the check re- 
moved when it would have worked to evil. I 
see it saved from the grasping tyranny of Hen- 
ry even while it was freed from a foreign usur- 
pation; held back from the danger of un- 
settling foundations under his successor, by 
the accession of Mary; drinking under her the 
cup of trial and suffering; baptized with the 



The English Reformation. 225 

baptism of fire and blood; driven to foreign 
lands or crushed at home; with the papacy 
and all which that word implies imposed upon 
it, and all the previous work, to human seem- 
ing, utterly undone. 

Then, looking on, I see it restored under 
Elizabeth with its voice of witness and of wor- 
ship heard in the land again, and its apos- 
tolic line continued. I see its exiles hastening 
home, too many bringing with them alien be- 
liefs and sym.pathies, which in coming time 
will rend the Church within and raise up 
an unresting enemy without. I see all the 
strength of the papacy, and all the power of 
the mightiest realm in Europe hurled against 
it in the great Armada, which the Lord scat- 
tered with the breath of His mouth. Looking 
still onward into another century, I see that 
other foe striving for the destruction of our 
Church, and apparently accomplishing its pur- 
pose. I see its altars overthrown, its churches 
despoiled, its clergy scattered, its services 
silenced till they are audible nowhere in the 
face of day, save in the chapel of the wander- 



226 The E7iglish Reformation, 

ing Charles's ambassador in Paris/ Still look- 
ing on, I see it restored to its old homes and 
ancient honors to the reversal of all human ex- 
pectations. I see it, in still later days, no 
longer in danger from without, but tried with 
the greater dangers of coldness, apathy, world- 
liness, and time serving from within. And 
then I see it as it is to-day, rising to a nobler, 
fuller life, stretching out from its isolation in 
** Britain severed from the world " to every con- 
tinent and the islands of the sea; speaking a 
language that seems likely to be to the world 
in coming days what the Greek was at the 
Lord's first coming, and yet giving to the na- 
tions where it goes God's Word and worship 
in their own several tongues; carrying every- 

8 Evelyn's '* Diary," vol. i. p. 337 (Colburn, 1854). He says, 
**In various controversies both with papists and sectarians, our 
divines used to argue for the visibility of the Church from his [Sir 
Thomas Browne's] chapel and congregation." Still he did not 
lose heart. And later on, in 1685, when things looked dark 
Romeward, he wrote, **I am most confident that the doctrine of 
the Church of England will never be extinguished, but remain 
visible, if not eminent^ to the consummation of the world," vol. 
ii. p. 239. 



The English Reformation, 227 

where the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship; 
the breaking of bread and the prayers. Is it 
not God's doing all this ? Could man alone 
ever have accomplished it ? Do not the pulses 
throb and the heart swell at all these tokens 
of God's immediate presence ? Are not cow- 
ardice, distrust, despondency, rebuked ? Are 
we not forced to say, whatever may be our 
anxieties and forebodings concerning present 
troubles, 

*' Therefore will we not fear, though the 
earth be moved, and though the hills be car- 
ried into the midst of the sea; 

*^ Though the waters thereof rage and swell, 
and though the mountains shake at the temp- 
est of the same. 

'* The rivers of the flood thereof shall make 
glad the city of God; the holy place of the 
tabernacle of the Most Highest. 

^' God is in the midst of her, therefore shall 
she not be removed; God shall help her, and 
that right early." 



